PROGRESSIVES FEAR “CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM”

A flag with three crosses on it and the american flag behind.

Progressives fear “Christian nationalism” because of simple math. In the United States, politicians are using their executive and legislative power to make many aspects of Biblical Christian life illegal. To ensure our religious freedom and parental rights, the Judeo-Christian community must become political. Data shows that the majority of the Judeo-Christian community is no more likely to be registered to vote and vote than the general population, only about 50% actually vote. The 2024 election could be an exception to this generality. Unfortunately, we are probably too late for 2024!

In the United States there are about 75 million Catholics and many support traditional Biblical and family values, morality, and ethics, especially in Hispanic communities. The US population also has 18.5 million Baptists including 3.1 million African Americans in the in the National Baptist Convention, 8-10 million Mormons, and at least 4 million US citizens in other Biblically Christian denominations. In addition, an undetermined number of Muslims are actively supporting traditional family values. Therefore, those who support the traditional family values, a Biblical worldview, and our Judeo-Christian Heritage total at least 110 million US citizens. If 60% are of voting age, then 66 million are eligible to vote in our elections. This is a silent majority that must be politically activated and silent no more if we are to save the United States of America as we know it.

If we were able to increase our national voter registration and election participation from 50% to 75%, and only 33% actually voted based on Biblically conservative values, we would add approximately 5.5 million conservative Biblical Christian voters in presidential elections. Such an increase would require voter registration and get out the vote campaigns where necessary. Similar increases in the Christian vote would also impact state and local elections, including school board elections changing the nature of public education one board member and school board at a time. In these situations, there would be no question regarding the winner of the popular vote in election after election. Conservative candidates supportive of Judeo-Christian values from the Presidency, US Congress, state, and local offices would also be elected. As in 2016, election of candidates supportive of our Judeo-Christian values could also impact the composition of the Supreme and inferior courts of the United States. In the current situation, replacement of one progressive Justice with another Scalia would create a 7-2 Constitutional originalist Supreme Court majority or maintain the current 6-3 majority that would last for decades. Is this why progressives fear Christian nationalism?

Progressives could lose political power and their ability to enact their antireligious, anti-family, immoral social agenda. Jon Brown’s February 21, 2024 The Christian Post article, Rob Reiner’s ‘God and Country’ is a schizophrenic, partisan broadside against conservative Christians is a review of the documentary which earned just $38,415 in 85 theaters during its opening weekend. The subtitle for the article, “Film suggests ‘Christian nationalists’ are thirsting for political violence, highlights of Brown’s highly critical review that follows:

“’God and Country,’ … produced by archliberal Rob Reiner that hit theaters last week, is a partisan broadside that deceptively conflates so-called ‘Christian nationalism’ with positions held by a large swath of conservative Christians.

The premise of the film is schizophrenic, demonizing Christians with inflammatory insinuations that invoke the Third Reich, while at the same time deriding them for having a persecution complex because they fear a growing cultural hostility.

Of the 18 expert talking heads recruited to opine on “the implications of ‘Christian nationalism’ and how it distorts not only the constitutional republic, but Christianity itself,” … the movement, … is broadly defined… as ‘basically the idea that America was founded as a so-called Christian nation, and that our law should be based on the Bible….’

A senior adviser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, at one point lists political positions common among conservative Christians to describe his idea of the ‘Christian nationalism’ that supposedly poses such a danger to the republic.

“‘Christian nationalists’ don’t like feminism, they want to roll that back,” he says. ‘They are appalled at the idea of LGBTQ rights; they want to roll those back. They do not like legal abortion, they want to end that in all 50 states. They do not like the idea that we have a secular public school system….’

‘Christian nationalists’… oppose Critical Race Theory and pornographic books in schools, as well as those Evangelicals who seek political change by mobilizing the electorate to vote for candidates who reflect their worldview. Entities like The Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA and Hillsdale College that contribute to such an effort are maligned as “Christian nationalist organizations.’

The film suggests that adhering to conservative Christian views is bad enough, but any attempt at securing political representation to enact them is presumably dangerous and even idolatrous, evincing what Russell Moore describes as ‘a valorization of power itself.’

Former President Donald Trump… is the main villain of the documentary, who supposedly played on the racism and lust for power simmering in the ‘Christian nationalist’ heart…, and tired accusations that Christians who support him have ‘abandoned their core principles.’

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Ph.D., a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, [claims that] ‘Christian nationalists’ to believe political violence is acceptable….

After implying that ‘Christian nationalists’ are thirsting for bloodshed, the film [lays] January 6… at the feet of ‘Christian nationalism….’

‘This threat of what I no longer even pretend is Evangelicalism — this white religious nationalism — may present one of the greatest dangers ever to our democratic experiment… It’s an ugly exercise to try to imagine what America might do as a fascist state.’

“Christian nationalism’ uses Christianity as a means to an end…, some form of authoritarianism….’

‘The biggest sin, if you will, of ‘Christian nationalism’, is that it sees pluralism,  [‘a theory that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality (Church and State)] as a weakness, and not what it is: the foundation of what it means to be American,’  says Reza Aslan, who abandoned Christianity for Islam and once proved his own radical devotion to multiculturalism by eating a cooked human brain with a fringe Hindu sect on CNN….

The clear takeaway is that for many on the Left, ‘Christian nationalism’ is simply any form of Christianity that seeks political representation without first bowing the knee to their progressive orthodoxy.

Many factions vie for their place in the rough-and-tumble of the public square, but conservative Christians seem to be the only ones expected to give up the battle, even by those within their own ranks.”

Reiner’s “God + Country” documentary demonstrates that progressives fear “Christian nationalism” as a potential Biblically Christian check on their immoral social agenda. Additionally, progressives are unwilling to reveal the cost of the production. Does that mean they are afraid to reveal how much they are willing to spend to call Conservative Bible believing Christians fascists and racists. It simply shows progressive ignorance concerning Christianity. One could ask whether progressives just project their intolerant, fascist, and racist attitudes onto Christians. Again, progressives fear “Christian nationalism” as Reiner’s God + Country so ineptly demonstrates. Rob Reiner and his fellow Marxist progressives fear “Christian nationalist” because they encourage Biblical Christians to register to vote and actually vote according to their Biblical values.

A conservative, Biblical Christian perspective on “Christian nationalism” is provided in an article by William Wolfe, op-ed coordinator for The Christian Post. Excerpts from Wolfe’s The Christin Post article, What do secular critics of ‘Christian Nationalism’ really want? follow:

“Apparently, any Christian who wants to see just laws grounded in biblical principles and Christian morality enacted in America these days is now a scary ‘Christian nationalist,’ according to secularists.

As Dr. Mark David Hall explained in his white paper on ‘Christian Nationalism’ for the Freedom Center’s Theology of Politics series, ‘Christian nationalism’ is an amorphous concept that is primarily used to tar Christians who are motivated by their faith to advocate for policies that critics don’t like.’

Now, many politically engaged conservative Christians either don’t like — or outright reject — the label of ‘Christian nationalism.’ Many argue that it’s unhelpful, too vague, too provocative, ill-defined, etc….

But what I think all Christians need to understand is that what the secular opponents of ‘Christian nationalism’ mean when they use that phrase is just ‘conservative Christians who vote their values.’ One of the main ways they hide this, and simultaneously try to shame and silence conservative Christians, is by accusing them of ‘lusting for power’ [when it is secularist who lust for power].

Because what these activists masquerading as ‘scholars’ want is nothing less than to silence politically engaged conservative Christians. We can’t let that happen. Because what America needs now, more than ever, is even more Christians voting their values and bringing their faith into the public square. That’s not a quest for power, it’s just biblical faithfulness….

Christians must unapologetically and wholeheartedly love and embrace God’s created order, vision, and commands for human flourishing — and work to manifest that vision, as faithfully as they can, in their national environment.

This means Christians must embrace a pro-life political posture as an unavoidable outworking of Exodus 20:7, Leviticus 18:2, Leviticus 20:1-5, and Psalm 139:13-16.

Christians must also acknowledge God-given binary gender reality and embrace complementarian gender roles because of the clear teachings of Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 2:21-25, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Ephesians 5:22-33, and 1 Timothy 2:12.

Christians must oppose homosexuality and transgenderism as sin because we are constrained by Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:24-27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Because each of these issues touches on the sacred nature of the [Image of God] and the marriage of our spiritual and physical realities, I argue that to subvert the priority of these concerns to lesser political interests, whether economic, environmental, or even related to the tone and tenor of the political candidate at hand, is to fail to exercise moral judgments in the political realm as guided by Scripture….

Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the ‘Christian nationalism’ that contemporary secular critics deride — that is, Christians who advocate for laws that protect life, honor marriage, and acknowledge biological reality both through the national culture and the laws of the land — is nothing more than faithful Christians seeking to steward their God-given political talents in America in such a way as to love God and their neighbor.

As Jason Mattera wrote in his excellent article for the Standing for Freedom Center, ‘The Canard of Christian Nationalism’:

“Those throwing the biggest temper tantrums regarding ‘Christian nationalism’ are doing so because they despise any push by Christians to ‘reproduce’ other biblically grounded Christians in the areas of law, politics, and culture. The real target isn’t ‘Christian nationalism’, whatever that is. Or even ‘people of faith’ in politics. The real target is conservative Christians in politics.”

You don’t have to adopt, or even like, the term “Christian nationalism’ to be able to see that this is what’s really going on.

These secular scholars aren’t trying to silence ‘Christian nationalists’ — they are trying to silence you, the average conservative Christian who reads and believes your Bible and then votes accordingly.”

In Jared Bridges’ The Christian Post article, Putin, Christian nationalism and the American Left, Bridges compares the Marxist Putin’s attitude about religion in Russia with the Marxist progressive’s attitude toward Christianity and “Christian nationalism” in the United States. They are frighteningly similar. Putin wants to “compartmentalize and internalize” Christianity and religion “at the individual level.” Putin said, “it’s not about external manifestations… It is in the heart.” In the United States during Covid, governors and civic leaders used similar arguments to close churches and regulate the manor of worship. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, said: “Is it the worship or the building? For me, God is wherever you are. You don’t have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers.” Faith is a matter of the heart. “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved (Romans 10:10 NIV).” Northam’s view is much the same as Putin’s in that religion should stop at the heart. In their view, faith is a private affair that should be kept in check when it bleeds over into public life.

“Christian nationalism” is a tricky topic. There are as many views of “Christian nationalism” as there are “Christian nationalists.” In one sense, “Christian nationalism” is a term used to categorize Christians who are motivated by their faith to action in the political realm with wildly differing perspectives. For Reiner, who is not a Christian, Christian nationalism is equivalent to Christian involvement in politics. For the Marxist progressives of the American Left, “Christian nationalism” is simply a tool that they can use to draw lines against political action by those who oppose their agenda. In that way, it’s not unlike Putin’s use of a religion for purposes of achieving his own political stability. Putin celebrates it out loud while quietly shutting it down. The American Left lampoons it out loud to the same end: that “faith would stay put in the heart of the individual. But a faith that stays put in the heart is a faith with blocked arteries. A heart that can’t pump its lifeblood outward will end in cardiac arrest.”

Bridges concludes his article by stating:

“’Christian nationalism’ or not, biblically faithful believers can’t let their faith be defined by political forces intent on corralling them. Putin may believe that “no one will be able to separate the soul,” but we believe that, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39 NIV).”

During an interview with Former Obama administration official and Founder and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, Michael Wear discussed “Christian nationalism.” When asked whether he believes it’s a genuine political and spiritual threat to America or if it’s just a derogatory term to malign conservative Christians. He said, “I think it depends on what ‘Christian nationalism’ you are talking about,” he said, adding that “there’s a range of ‘definitions’ different people use.” In one way,

“the term identifies… a marginal group that isn’t even necessarily practicing Christianity, but they leverage religious symbols, rhetoric, to promote political violence, for instance, and it’s that that I’m concerned about.”

Wear added that the term has “become counterproductive,” believing that the term “has become so misused.” He also said, “to the extent that ‘Christian nationalism’ has to be rejected, the problem is not that it’s too Christian, it’s that it’s not Christian enough.” Wear also said he wanted people to know “that the kind of people we are has much to do with the kind of politics we have and that spiritual formation is essential to civic renewal;” and “The way of Jesus is viable in public life. We can trust Jesus.”

Two additional articles, written from the Biblical Christian perspective regarding “Christian nationalism” are Robert Barron rebukes Heidi Przybyla for God-given rights comment and Christian conservatism versus Christian nationalism.

Although they will not admit it, progressives fear “Christian nationalism” because they fear God fearing people united in service to God.

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PROGRESSIVES VS TRADITIONAL FAMILIES

PROGRESSIVES VS TRADITIONAL FAMILIES CONTENTS

    Progressive Vision for Families

    Traditional Biblical Families

     Spiritual Warfare: A Clash of Worldviews

     Education: Progressives’ Secret Weapon

     The Biblical Christian Response 

     Progressive Vision for Families

Progressives vs traditional families have been the focus of social and cultural debate since the early 19th century. In the 1848 publication, The Communist Manifesto section “Proletarians and Communists” Marx summarized the communist or progressive position on families up to that time when he wrote the following:

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois (ruling class, landowners, and capitalists) family based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.”

In 1927, Robert Briffault published The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions where he wrote:

“…The expectation that the decay of the patriarchal family as a result of the serious crisis of the individualistic, competitive economy would increase, and that a society no longer characterized by competitiveness would be able finally to release social emotions which went beyond the narrow and distorting circle of family.”

In Briffault’s opinion, the traditional “patriarchal” Biblical family is a distortion of humanity and society which must be eliminated for the Marxist vision for society to be realized. Traditional, Biblical families promote “individualism” which has no place in a truly “communist,” Marxist, progressive society. Additionally, PROGRESSIVES OPPOSE CHRISTIANITY provides a thorough discussion of progressive animosity toward all aspects of Biblical Christianity including the family. Marxist progressive philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have been writing about and conducting sociological and psychological research “designed” to evaluate the “harm” caused to people by patricentric, patriarchal, traditional, Biblical families. Interestingly, progressives only started to publicly show their hostile Marxist attitudes toward the traditional family using the terms patricentric and patriarchal as pejorative descriptions of traditional families in the past few years.

The progressive cultural worldview of the family summarized by the above quotes were the predecessors of the current cultural worldview of families. LGBTQ+ families now include same-sex couples, two wives or mothers, two husbands or fathers, or two same-sex people and a bi-sexual person. Any of these people, in this vision for families, could also be trans-sexual or queer. It is difficult to keep up with the new types of gender identity regularly added to the progressive sexuality gender acronym. The latest, hopefully last, new acronym, 2SLGBTQIA+, means Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, where the plus reflects the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify. The progressive ideology and worldview on gender and sexuality is central to their attacks on traditional, Biblical, families. 2SLGBTQIA+ “genders” have a direct impact on the gender/sexual composition of “family” according to progressives. Consequently, the progressive worldview defines family as simply “kinship arrangements or the organization of a household.”

Traditional Biblical Families

In contrast, the patricentric, patriarchal, traditional, Biblical family has consisted of a husband or father, a wife or mother, and their children for thousands of years. This is the family model even in most non-Judeo-Christian cultures and societies. The exceptions are polygamous cultures where men are allowed more than one wife and female dominated matriarchal cultures. In some matriarchal cultures, wealth is transmitted to the youngest female of the family since she has the greatest potential longevity. However, the polygamy of the Old Testament kings of Israel and Juda was not in accordance with God’s plan for families. The Old Testament narratives of these families showed the problems they generated for generations and decades that followed.

Seven Principles from Genesis for Marriage and Family by Todd S. Beall provides perspective on the Biblical Christian worldview concerning traditional families. The following discussion is a summary of Beall’s article. He notes that God states His creation was “good” seven times in Genesis 1. Mariage was not man’s idea but essential to God’s plan for Creation. God created marriage. In marriage, the two together become one, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. God made humans to have meaning in life by living together in families. Genesis 1&2, provides the narrative of God’s creation of marriage and the family as follows:

Genesis 1:26 “God created man in His image; in the image of God, He created him….  27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them…. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’”

Genesis 2:18 It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper corresponding to him…. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 [Adam said] ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.’ 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Consequently, marriage involves the creation of a new family unit. Husband and wife are to leave their father and mothers. As God prepared Noah for the flood, He reaffirmed His plan for marriage and families in Genesis 7:7 where we read:

“Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.”

In Mathew 19:4-6 Jesus reaffirmed God’s creation plan for marriage and the family when he said,

“Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man separate.’”

God’s marriage plan has been for a man and a woman to become one flesh physically, emotionally, and spiritually since creation. Mariage is a divine institution ordained by God for service to him.

Perhaps Matthew Henry’s observation that the woman was “not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved” best describes the marriage relationship between husband and wife before the “Fall.” After the “Fall,” described in Genesis 3, this relationship changed. Eve was deceived by the serpent and ate fruit from tree of the knowledge of “good and evil” and convinced Adam to eat the fruit as well in disobedience of God’s command. Their disobedience brought sin to the world. After they confessed their sin, God punished each in a way that affect men and women for the rest of human existence. As a result, differences in the functions of men and women in the marriage relationship were amplified. In Genesis 3:16-23, we read,

“To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’ 17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return….’ 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

The Genesis 3:16-19 narrative implies that the husband-wife relationship was marred after the Fall. Since Eve was the one who was deceived by the serpent, Satan, God told Eve that childbearing pain would be “very severe” and her husband would “rule over you.” These scriptures imply that childbearing and rearing would become the primary function of the women in marriage discussed below. The function of the man would be head of the family and provision of food, shelter, and security for the family. As first in human creation, Adam was held responsible for the disobedience of both himself and Eve and their sin since he “listened to [his] wife” instead of resisting the temptation she proposed to him.

The different functions or roles of men and women, and the tension that original sin brought into Biblical marriage, illuded to in Genesis are clearly stated in the New Testament. The family leadership of men in marriage is discussed in 1 Peter 3:1 and Ephesians 5:22–33 with this caveat:

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, … 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.”

The New Testament continues Biblical marriage instruction in 1 Timothy 2:12-14, 1 Corinthians 11:8-9, and Romans 5:12-19.

In her article, “Music and Marriage: Harmonizing the Roles,” Lindsay Edmonds, provides the following illuminating analogy concerning Biblical marriage.

“Good music, she says, requires both a melody and a harmony or accompaniment:

“They are both very important parts to convey the full harmony of the song. Although the melody is often more prominent than the accompaniment, without the accompaniment and background harmonies the melody has no support or fullness. It does not sound as rich and beautiful without this proper balance. Likewise, in comparison, in a marriage relationship we have two very equally important roles between a husband and a wife, but each has a completely different function. Without one or the other we do not have the full array of beauty and design that God created to be displayed in the marriage relationship, which is then a reflection of the Father and Son’s relationship in the Trinity. If the roles are reversed and the woman is showing disrespect in her attitude towards her husband to such an extent that he feels unworthy and unable to lead his family, we have a conflict of balance. It will sound more like a train wreck than sweet music.”

The question that both the husband and wife must ask themselves and each other is, “Do we want our marriage to demonstrate to the culture around us that our marriage is a “train wreck [or] sweet music?”

In the Biblical worldview of marriage, the only Godly and acceptable sexuality is that which occurs between a husband and wife in the context of marriage discussed above. Consequently, pre-marital sex of any type, polygamy, homosexuality, incest, pedophilia, and bestiality are violations of God’s law and creation’s plan for marriage and sexuality: and therefore, condemned by God. Beall’s article provides numerous Old and New Testament scriptures and narratives demonstrating these Godly facts. The article also describes how devastating moral compromise and favoritism can be to current and future family relationships, potentially causing problems lasting years or generations. In the last section of the article, Beall demonstrates that God blesses repentance and forgiveness within marriage and family relationships to restore family relationships through His grace and love.

When children become part of the Biblical family, God’s word provides additional instruction about these relationships. Some of these instructions include the following:

Exodus 20:12 – “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

Deuteronomy 4:9 “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them [God’s precepts] known to your sons and your grandsons.”

Deuteronomy 11:19 “You shall teach them [God’s precepts] to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.”

Psalms 127:3-5 “Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him.”

Proverbs 13:24 “He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”

Proverbs 19:18 “Discipline your son while there is hope, And do not desire his death.”

Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Psalm 103:13 “Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”

Joel 1:3 “Tell your sons about [God’s punishment for disobedience] , And let your sons tell their sons, And their sons to the next generation.”

Colossians 3:20-21, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers,[c] do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.”

1 Timothy 3:4 “[A man] must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full[a] respect.”

1 Timothy 5:8 “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Perhaps the most impactful guidance regarding the parent child relationship in Biblical Christian families is found in Ephesians 6:1-4:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ — which is the first commandment with a promise—’so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on earth.’ Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Obviously, the contrast between the cultural worldview of families, “kinship arrangements or the organization of a household,” and Biblical worldview for families is striking. This contrast is at the heart of the progressives vs traditional families debate. As Biblical Christians deal, with these contrasting worldview issues, we are engaged in spiritual warfare at the personal, local, state, national, and global level.

Spiritual Warfare: A Clash of Worldviews

Spiritual warfare is at the heart of the progressives vs traditional families debate and the contrast between the cultural and Biblical worldviews competing for the soul of our nation and the world. The essence of this Spiritual Warfare is the battle between good and evil.  The battle between good and evil began when “Lucifer, son of the morning” (Isaiah 14:12 KJV), Satan, one of the three archangels, cherubim, or cherubs created by God, rebelled against God before the rest of creation occurred. Lucifer said,

“I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God: I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High (Isaiah 14:13-14 NIV).”

In response to Satan’s rebellion, God drove him from his presence saying,

“You were anointed as guardian cherub, for so I ordained you.  You were on the holy mount of God …. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you … and you sinned.  So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub…, your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.  So I threw you to the earth…. (Ezekiel 28:14-17 NIV).”

Some of the lesser created heavenly hosts apparently followed in this rebellion and were also cast out of the presence of God according to Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4.

The contrast and antithetical nature of the attitude and innermost desires of the heart and soul of Satan and the heart and soul of God’s one and only Son, Jesus Christ, is incomprehensible even to those who are followers of Christ.  Biblical Christians understand the following:

“(Our) attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasp, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on the cross!  Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2: 5-11 NIV).”

Satan attempted to exalt himself.  He was humbled and will ultimately be defeated.  Jesus Christ the one and only Son of God, in contrast, humbled Himself, became a man, died on the cross for the remission of the sin of mankind, and was exalted by God the Father.  Jesus is a glorious Savior!

Since God created man in his own image (Genesis 2:27), humanity became the focus of Satan’s spiritual warfare against God because man was created in the image of God.  Satan seeks to keep us from having a close personal relationship with God. In spiritual warfare, Satan seeks to separate people from God’s love. The pattern Satan followed in his fall from grace with God became the pattern he uses almost without exception when he tempts us to disobey God and to rebel. First, Satan became proud and arrogant.  Secondly, Satan thought he had the power or ability to make himself into a god.  When Satan tempts us, he appeals to our pride convincing us that we have the power or ability to please God or earn his approval by our own deeds, to become like God, or to become a god ourselves.  When we fall for these temptations, our fate is the same as that of Satan.  We are

“dead in (our) transgressions and sins… when [we] followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air (Satan), the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient…, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature (Ephesians 2:1-3 NIV).”

Without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as savior, we, like Satan, are condemned for our rebellion and sin!

As previously noted, the contrast between the cultural worldview and the Biblical worldview is stark and originates in the heart of Satan who seeks to separate every person from the love of God. Every Biblical Christian deals with spiritual warfare, temptation, on the personal level. We are also affected on the local, state, national, and global level. Unfortunately, the spiritual warfare conducted by those advocating the ungodly cultural worldview have gained the upper hand in virtually every aspect of our culture. Even in the United States, Biblical Christians are being persecuted, chastised, and/or “canceled,” and even arrested for expressing Biblical views about marriage and families, sexuality, gender identity issues, educational curricula, parental rights, and freedom of speech. These issues are also at the heart of the progressives vs traditional families debate. In many of these situations, the First Amendment rights of Biblical Christians are being trampled upon.

In the United States, progressives control virtually every method of communicating their ideology and cultural worldview. Progressives control education from Pre-school to Ph.D., Marxism PP, pop music, motion pictures and television, theater, news media in virtually all its forms, and print, audio, and visual advertising. These communication media promote all aspects of the cultural worldview. The most recent gender acronym is 2SLGTBQIA+, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, where the plus reflects the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify. Can a person “self-identify” with identities that are not related to gender? Can a bar tender “self-identify” as a clinical psychologist? Many already serve a similar function for their patrons. After all, Joe Rogan moved from a MMA fighter to announcer to commentator to a nationally syndicated cultural commentator. Is there a limit to “self-identity” possibilities? Where gender is concerned, the possibilities seem limitless. Gender identity issues dominate this worldview and the progressives vs traditional families debate.

From the Biblical perspective, progressives promoting gender affirming care at all ages, but especially for children, through hormone therapy, chemical sterilization, and sex change operations, are positioning themselves to the place of a god, as Satan tried, by altering God’s creation of males or females. Basically, these “experts” are saying, “God doesn’t have a clue about ‘gender;’ but we know better.” When children under the age of 18 are involved, gender affirming care of this nature, and school promoted changes in a child’s preferred gender pronouns, becomes a progressives vs traditional families and parental rights issue especially when these type treatments and changes are promoted and carried out without parental consent.

Education: Progressives’ Secret Weapon

In the early 1900’s, progressives began formulating a plan and projects designed to gain control of public education in the United States. Stalin summarized the progressive cultural worldview vs the Biblical worldview debate as follows: “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.” They planned to use education to convert the United States from a nation that revered our Judeo-Christian heritage and capitalistic economic system to an atheistic or at least agnostic socialist or communist nation. Around 1970, Hergert Marcuse, the father of the modern left, postulated critical refinements of the plan. First, he said that an “educational dictatorship” was required to change western minds, or socialism would not succeed. Progressive ideology, Marxism, already dominated our public universities and most private institutions’ faculties and curricula in the social sciences, liberal arts, and especially education. The editors of A DICTIONARY OF MARXIST THOUGHT, 1983, demonstrated the staged demise of Marxism and its hidden influence accomplished by exchanging overt Marxist references for indirect terminology, as follows:

“Leszek Kolakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism, … argues that while the intellectual legacy of Marx has been largely assimilated into modern social sciencesso that … Marxism is ‘dead’ – as an efficacious political doctrine….”

The editors go on to contradict the verdict that “Marxism is ‘dead’” as follows:

“But it is precisely the distinctive explanatory power of Marxist thought in many areas, …and its capacity to generate … a body of rational   for a socialist society, which seems to many thinkers to make Marxism an enduring challenge to other modes of thought.”

Consequently, it is safe to conclude from these two statements that Marxism is not “dead;” but, Marxism is “a body of rational norms” that have “been largely assimilated into modern social sciences” using language not easily associated with Marxism, socialism, and communism. Secondly, Marcuse believed the working class was no longer a potentially subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change in the United States. Instead, Marcuse put his faith in an alliance between “radical intellectuals, the socially marginalized, the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other ethnicities and other colors, the unemployed, and the unemployable.” Accordingly, these groups could be molded into the revolutionaries needed to affect radicle change in the United States.

Subsequently, numerous curricula have been developed for groups that Marcuse thought could become a “subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change in the United States.” Departments and curricula for “marginalized… ethnicities and other colors” and the “socially marginalized” were subsequently developed including Black, Native American, Hispanic, Women’s, and Gender Studies. New curricula, programs, and groups were developed by the radicle progressive Marxist faculty and graduates of these disciplines including Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter, the Lincoln Project, and the 1619 Project. ANTIFA, the useful puppet minions of the radicle, progressive, Marxist left, appears to be a movement made up of the violent, “marginalized… outcasts and outsiders” of our society.

In his 1965 publication: Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse described how to establish his “educational dictatorship” and influence public discourse as follows:

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left…. [If movements from the left are blocked], their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements… [from the right].”

In classrooms and campuses from preschool to Ph.D., as well as society in general, “toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements… [from the right]” has been “withdrawn” by “undemocratic means,” like violent ANTIFA protests, the “Political Correctness” movement “Cancel Culture,” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, DEI, and Inclusion, Social, and Government, ISG, laws, requirements, and programs.

Since Marcuse promoted his educational dictatorship and educational program and curricula refinements, the progressive cultural worldview now dominates virtually all our society. About one-third of the Millennials and virtually all of Gen Z who have a college degree from a public university or community college and many with a public high school diploma have been educated under the Marxist curricula described above. Consequently, more and more leaders in corporate America were exposed, either overtly or covertly, to curricula where “Marx [is] largely assimilated” into virtually everything they learned. These leaders are prepared to use US corporations, government from the local to national level, and our legal system to promote progressive ideology, programs, and ranking programs like DEI and ISG. The federal government is requiring DEI and ISG rankings as part of finance applications where applicants must prove how “WOKE” they are to qualify for capital financing. Applicants must have adequate policies and employee training in DEI and ISG in place to qualify for financing and get the best interest rates. With their Marxist education, “Wall Street,” Disney, Target, and Budweiser executives, among others, are willing coconspirators in this type of social engineering which promotes Marxism and equal outcomes based on categories of people like race and gender, rather than individual merit. Those who do not fit progressive “diversity” categories or profess ideological views contrary to progressive orthodoxy became outcasts, both culturally and professionally. For this reason, conservatives and those of us with a Biblical worldview have found some alternative acronyms for the reality of DEI including the following: Division, Exclusion, Intimidation; Division, Exclusion, Indoctrination; and Division, Exclusion, Intolerance. Sadly, this thinking also impacts the progressives vs traditional families debate.

The Biblical Christian Response

The contrast in worldviews in the progressives vs traditional families debate demands a proactive Biblical Christian response. We must unite and prepare to become political and Biblical activists. Progressive educators introduced their anti-family curricula from our colleges into pre-schools, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, or from Preschool to Ph.D., Marxism PP. Parents saw the radical and pervasive anti-family 2SLGBTQIA+, anti-American, and CRT principled curricula being taught to their children during Covid virtual classes. Biblical Christian parents finally discovered that progressives control all levels of public education and much of the curricula is progressive, Marxist, propaganda designed to indoctrinate children and produce present and future activists. Biblical parents learned why so many young children participate, some speaking out, in progressive protests about gender issues, climate control, abortion issues, and the evals of capitalism. The debate, which illustrates the stark contrast between the progressive cultural worldview and the Biblical Christian worldview, has become more heated and political. Parents are demanding curricula changes and their rights as parents to be involved in their children’s education. Education is at the heart of accomplishing Stalin’s vision for America. Consequently, the progressives vs traditional families debate is, in reality, the progressives vs the United States of America as we know and love it debate.

Although most Biblical Christians and our leaders have avoided politics and political activism in favor of evangelism for over 100 years, politics and activism, along with evangelism, are now necessary to stem the tide of the Godless progressive tidal wave sweeping across the United States and the world. As Biblical Christians consider our response to the progressive educational dictatorship in public education and the predominant cultural worldview, we should consider the Biblical fact that Jesus, the disciples, and Paul did not hesitate to confront the political leaders of their time, Sadducees, Pharisees, governors, and kings in their seats of power, synagogues, and palaces. If Jesus did not avoid evangelism in the public arena by confronting political leaders, Biblical Christians should not avoid political activism today.

The first response of Biblical Christians must be to unite. We must join forces, set our denominational differences aside, and join with para-church evangelistic and disaster relief ministries. In the United States there are about 75 million Catholics who generally support traditional Biblical family values, morality, and ethics, especially in Hispanic communities. The US population also includes 18.5 million Baptists including 3.1 million African Americans in the in the National Baptist Convention, 8-10 million Mormons, and at least 4 million US citizens in other Biblically Christian denominations. In addition, an undetermined number of Muslims are actively supporting traditional family values. Therefore, those who support the traditional family values, a Biblical world view, and our Judeo-Christian Heritage total at last 110 million US citizens eligible to vote in our elections. This is a silent majority that must be politically activated and silent no more if we are to save the United States of America as we know it.

This would require voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns in all communities supporting traditional family values and religious freedom including Biblical Christians, Catholics, Mormons, and Muslims. If only half of these citizens vote as in most past elections, increasing their election participation by 50% would result in potentially 30 million more votes for candidates professing a Biblical worldview and support for traditional families, morality, ethics, and respect for the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States of America.

The second response of Biblical Christians in the progressive vs traditional families debate and the contrast between the cultural worldview and the Biblical worldview is to gain sufficient understanding of the Marxist, progressive, cultural worldview to become confident participants in this debate. While voting is critical to stemming the progressive tide in the United States, informed Biblical Christians and Conservatives must become activists. We must not be afraid to speak for our Biblical worldview with candidates at every level, at school board meetings, and at candidate forums and debates. We must also not be afraid to organize and participate in non-violent, MLK style, public demonstrations and protests in opposition to laws and public policies that violate our Constitutional rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or adversely impact our traditional, Biblical Christian family values and worldview. On this website, AMERICA’S CROSSROAD, the “BLOG CONTENTS” tab lists relevant articles by categories.

Moms for liberty and Capitol Ministries each provides materials that inform member/activists about our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights and how to organize and structure new chapters.  Moms for Liberty stresses more grassroots activism at the local level to influence local political action and school board elections to change education of our children from the bottom up including training parent activists and schoolboard candidates. These chapters promote candidates with a Biblical worldview who support parental rights, school curricula that are not anti-Christian, anti-traditional family, anti-American, Critical Race Theory, gender identity, and other Marxist concepts and propaganda. Capital Ministries tends to be a top-down ministry that seeks to identify existing political leaders and office holders and established businesspeople who have a Biblical worldview but have not actively expressed that worldview or need mentoring to become effective ministers of the Gospel in their sphere of influence and potential political leaders. Both these groups provide resources that can promote and train politicians and elected officials, organize and support local chapters for people who share a Biblical Worldview, support traditional families, religious rights and freedom, the Constitution, and our capitalistic economic system. Both groups can help advance Biblical values in the progressives vs traditional families debate. The question is, “Can these two organizations join forces, set their approach differences aside, and work together with the religious groups noted above to save the United Stares of America that we all know and love?”

Finally, around 60% of the voting age US population are not college graduates. Some of these attended college but lack degrees; and, therefore, were not fully indoctrinated in progressive ideology, Marxism. These citizens form the working middle and lower classes in the US. Many do not share progressive cultural worldview holding a more traditional view of family, freedom, our Judeo-Christian, Biblical worldview, and Constitutional capitalistic heritage. This group has worked for a living, paid to learn their trade, or became successful in the “school of hard knocks.” Many in this group, which have been abandoned by progressives because Marcus told progressives that they were no longer potential revolutionaries for Marxist causes in the United States. “America First,” “Make America Great Again,” members of the Republican Party identified this group as potentially strong, conservative additions the Republican voting bloc in 2016. The question is, “how many of these potential voters hold a traditional or Biblical Worldview. Those of us seeking to add numbers to the Biblical worldview voting bloc should not forget these potential Biblical worldview supporters. All we know is that many became new Republican voters and helped elect Donald Trump President in 2016. How many in this group can be added to the 110 million previously discussed? Could we persuade 5 million, 10 million, more? With each group discussed, the silent majority gets bigger and bigger.

In the progressives vs traditional families debate, the deeper issue is the Marxist, progressive, cultural worldview vs the Biblical worldview debate which has become more and more heated and political in the last 5-10 years. The problem is that Christians have failed to stand up for Biblical Christian values and the Biblical worldview for more than a century. We have given Marxist progressives free reign to control the dialog. We have not listened to Christ when he said in Matthew 5:15-16,

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”

Today’s Christian “bushel basket” has been our churches and homes. Progressives have pushed their Godless values, morals, and ethics into every corner of our society; and we did nothing to stop them. We stayed in our church and home “baskets” and let them change the United States of America for the very worst.

It is time for Biblical Christians to get out of our church and home “baskets.” It is time to unite, work together, and return the United States of America to the “Nation” that God ordained it to be.

Join the fray. All of the America ‘s Crossroad Posts are listed by categories in the BLOG CONTENTS tab.  If you decide to read a few, please leave comments about your “Patriot Visions,” start or join the conversation, and share the Posts with friends and political frienimies.

 

 

CHRISTIANS TRAIN YOUR CHILDREN

Christians train your children; or the Godless, progressive, social Marxists, will train them for you. Our children are a precious gift from God. The Bible demonstrates that God has a plan for each individual before they are conceived. In Psalms 39:13-14 we read,

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Similarly, Jeremiah 1:4, states,

A baby is in a bowl with pink stuff around it.

“The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I anointed you as a prophet to the nations.’”

Since God has a plan for every person before they were conceived, Biblical Christian parents have an obligation to raise and train their children in a manner that allows each child to discover “the way they should go.” Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Similarly, Ephesians 6:4 reminds Christians to “bring [our children] up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” In 1Kings 8:36b, Solomon prayed that God would teach the Israelites the “right way to live.” Titus 2:1-2 tells us that we must “teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.  Teach older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, sound in faith, in love, and in endurance.”

Christians train your children is a command from God not a suggestion. The following four Bible verses provide additional guidance to parents about God’s command to teach our children:

“These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”  Deuteronomy 6:6-9

“Those who spare the rod [fail to discipline] hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.” Proverbs 13:24

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9

“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” 1 John 3:4

The critical question for Biblical Christians is this. Can we allow Godless, atheistic, progressive, social Marxists in our public schools and state universities to teach our Christian children and grandchildren moral precepts and values that contradict Biblical morality and precepts? In my opinion, God would say no, we must “train [our children] in the way [they] should go.” God provides this warning to Biblical Christian parents in James 3:1b “we who teach will be judged more strictly.” Teaching our children is something that Biblical Christians cannot delegate to non-Christians.

Unfortunately, today’s Biblical Christians are like the proverbial frog in a pan of water where the temperature is being gradually increased to a lethal boiling temperature. We are near lethality because we have been duped by progressive educators who told us they only have the best interest of the children in their hearts. In my opinion, one of the best means of learning about the century long progressive plan to undermine Biblical Christianity’s role in our nation’s global influence, success, and prosperity is Pete Hegseth’s 10-part Fox Nation series, “The Miseducation of America.” The series explains how the progressive strategy of undermining Biblical Christianity as the moral underpinning of our society began in earnest over 100 years ago during the Wilson Administration with subtle changes in curricula, the Gary Indiana progressive school system and curricula experiment, and the progressive origin of our “Pledge of Allegiance” designed to change our children’s allegiance from God to our nation and its flag. Originally, the pledge did not contain the phrase “under God” added by President Eisenhour during the height of the “cold War.” The series also explains the reason progressives try to force preschoolers and elementary students to conform to their Godless and immoral concepts of sexuality and gender identity. In the late 1800’s, prohibitionist’s nationwide third grade anti-alcohol curricula led to passage of Amendment XVIII prohibiting sale and distribution of alcohol. The power of early childhood education as a tool to change and manipulate social, moral, and ethical standards in the United States was demonstrated by the prohibition curricula against alcohol.

Biblical Christians, Baptists, Nazarenes, Assembly of God, Four Square, and Evangelicals in “cultural Christian” denominations are decades behind progressives in the field of education and their assault on the Judeo-Christian values that have served the United States very well since our founding. Progressives and the left have an “educational dictatorship” teaching curricula that is Marxist propaganda. These progressive educators teach Marxist critical race theory, Queer Theory, gender theory, and Marxism in virtually every academic discipline from Preschool to Ph.D., Marxist PP. Fortunately, we can take heart as we seek to regain and maintain our parental rights pertaining to teaching and raising our children. God tells us in Romans 8:31; “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” It is time to unite. Christians train your children.

First, most Biblical Christians and religious Jews do not consider politics as a part of our Great Commission mission. However, Jesus, the disciples, and Paul did not hesitate to confront the political leaders of their time, Sadducees, Pharisees, governors, and kings in their seats of power, synagogues, and palaces. In the United States, politicians are using their executive and legislative power to make many aspects of Biblical Christian life illegal. To ensure our religious freedom and parental rights, the Judeo-Christian community must become political. Data shows that the majority of the Judeo-Christian community is no more likely to be registered to vote and vote than the general population. The 2024 election could be an exception to this generality. If we were able to increase our national voter registration and election participation from 50% to 75%, we would add 8,000,000 to 15,000,000 votes, or more, in presidential elections. Such an increase would require voter registration and get out the vote campaigns where necessary. Similar increases in the Christian vote would also impact state and local elections, including school board elections changing the nature of public education one board member and school board at a time. In these situations, there would be no question regarding the winner of the popular vote in election after election. Conservative candidates supportive of Judeo-Christian values from the Presidency, US Congress, state, and local offices would also be elected. As in 2016, election of candidates supportive of our Judeo-Christian values could also impact the composition of the Supreme and inferior courts of the United States. In the current situation, replacement of one progressive Justice with another Scalia would create a 7-2 Constitutional originalist Supreme Court majority or maintain the current 6-3 majority that would last for decades. Christians train your children by participation in your school board elections voting for candidates supporting your Judeo-Christian values or becoming a school board candidate yourself.

Second, Biblical Christians and religious Jews need to become politicians especially at the state and local level especially as school board members. Many more members of the Judeo-Christian community need to become local participants at state legislative sessions and lobbyists meeting personally with state and national legislators, city and county leaders, and school board members. These activities are especially effective when constituents meet their leaders in groups since numbers have an impact. Groups of Judeo-Christians and a growing number of Muslims are joining together to share resources and numbers impacting School boards and other elections. Two of these groups are Moms for Liberty and the ParentalRights Foundation. Progressives are training our children now; but God’s admonition to us is, Christians train your children. It is time to get started.

When Judeo-Christians and Biblical Christians become political, we cannot neglect our primary mission found in Mathew 28;19-20:

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

It is encouraging to know the following:

“If a child is the first person in a household to become a Christian, there is a 3.5% probability everyone else in the household will follow. If the mother is the first to become a Christian, there is a 17% probability everyone else in the household will follow. But if the father is first, there is a 93% probability everyone else in the household will follow.”

The challenges are great; but each Biblical Christian understands that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).

Remember, Christians train your children is God’s command not a suggestion.

Join the fray. All of the America’s Crossroad Posts are listed by categories in the BLOG CONTENTS tab.  If you decide to read a few, please leave comments about your “Patriot Visions,” start or join the conversation, and share the Posts with friends and political frienimies.

 

 

 

 

GLOBALISM CAN KILL US

A man holding a whip in front of a pile of money.Globalism can kill us! An April 2023 on-line Supply Management article makes some startling remarks about drug shortages in the US. Nine in 10 (90-95%) of generic sterile injectable drugs for critical acute care in the US rely on key starting materials from China and India. India possessed 62% of the global manufacturing capacity of active pharmaceutical ingredients, API, in 2021, while China stood at 23%, and the US just 4%, and doctors were rationing lifesaving treatments. The article concludes with this dire warning, Drug shortages are increasing, lasting longer, and having a greater impact on patient care.

A May 2023 on-line article reviewed a Senate report that cited an overreliance on foreign sources as a concern. Factories in China and India supply most of the raw materials used in American medicines. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, India restricted exports of API’s and finished drugs made from those chemicals to protect its domestic drug supply. BIG PHARMA further complicates supply shortages because medications like Adderall and amoxicillin generate thin profits so companies don’t have an incentive to make and store large amounts in case a shortage develops, University of Utah Health researcher Erin Fox observed. In addition, when demand spikes. Federal regulators limit supplies of Adderall each year because it is a controlled substance. Once shortages develop, they can last for years; and it can be tough for patients to get reliable information. Fox said there is no legal requirement for drugmakers to update the public. Companies have said they aren’t getting enough raw materials to make the drugs, and the federal government says companies aren’t using what they have. Fox said, There’s been a lot of finger pointing back and forth.

The finger pointing is amplified by a February 2023 CNN on-line article, McKinney, the FDA spokesman, clarified that although the FDA is working with manufacturers, the agency does not make drugs and cannot require a pharmaceutical company to make a drug, make more of a drug, or change the distribution of a drug. The lack of transparency about these production issues “ how big the shortage is and how much drug each company is making “ is hindering solutions. Additionally, pharmaceutical manufacturers are not required to disclose the reason for disrupted supply. Knowing the exact reason for a given shortage is needed to anticipate shortages and find solutions. Without solutions, globalism can kill us.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response told the committee staff that 90 to 95% of injectable drugs used for critical acute care rely on key substances from China and India. In other words, a severe breakdown in the supply chain could leave emergency rooms scrambling. The report also found that the federal government and industry regulators lack visibility into the supply chain for such drugs, making it harder to predict shortages. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t know, for example, the amount of starting material a manufacturer has available, or, in some instances, how many manufacturers are involved in producing the final drug.

Nikkei Asia headlines and summaries note that China’s pharmaceutical market is already the second biggest in the world, after the U.S., thanks in large part to domestic demand from hospitals. Now Beijing wants to take the final step and surpass the U.S.  Many pharmaceutical companies faced supply chain disruptions, especially since Covid-19. Often, chemicals used to produce the key ingredients in drugs were sourced from only a few suppliers in China — or sometimes just one. The pandemic has brought to light just how much the global pharmaceutical supply chain depends on China, even for the most basic ingredients. Consequently, globalism can kill us.

According to an August 2021 Harvard Business Review on-line article, most finished pharmaceuticals, whether made abroad or in U.S. factories, depend almost entirely on the availability of API’s, the primary functional components of the drugs we take. These ingredients include everything from the active substances in over-the-counter pain medications to life-saving IV solutions. Without APIs, pharmaceutical manufacturing grinds to a halt and shortages quickly follow. There is a very limited domestic capacity to make these essential medicine ingredients. The U.S. manufacturing base to make APIs has drastically eroded over the last several decades. Most of the supply now comes from abroad. For many materials, there is a single, foreign source of supply. The global over-reliance on China and India for APIs required to produce them, and essential medicines is especially worrisome. An estimated 80% of the world’s APIs come from China, India, and a handful of other foreign countries.

For several decades globalists in our national government, pharmaceutical industry, and many of our other domestic manufacturing conglomerates have moved manufacturing overseas. The result is a progressive globalism contradiction. They do this to save money on land, labor, facility construction due to lower environmental protection laws, and fewer occupational safety regulations. Consequently, the United States no longer controls our supply chains for many products needed to maintain our dominance in several global markets, including pharmaceuticals. Where the pharmaceutical industry is concerned, globalism can kill us.

The fact that the US only produces 4% of the globes API needed to manufacture critical pharmaceuticals must be solved. This is a national security problem and a national health problem. The fact that most of our pharmaceutical companies are now international conglomerates run by globalists makes solutions to this problem difficult. The multinational corporations must first answer the question of allegiance. Do they owe their allegiance to their shareholders; or to the nation and people where they gained their stature and competitive position on the world market? This is the most critical and contradictory question that progressive corporate globalists must answer. If corporate leaders and boards of directors cannot convince pharmaceutical shareholders that they should put the United States and We the People ahead of profits, then globalism can kill us. If the majority of the pharmaceutical supply chains, API sourcing and production, and final product manufacturing cannot be either greatly diversified or moved to US facilities, globalism can kill us.

Solving these critical issues will require cooperation between our local, state, and national governments and the entire pharmaceutical industry. At the national level, many of the more restrictive environmental assessment requirements could be waived to facilitate timely plant construction. State and local zoning regulations could be reduced and programs to train the workforce for these plants could be implemented and timed to meet plant openings. Government and the pharmaceutical industry must work together to ensure that We the People have the medications to live healthy, productive lives without the danger of medication shortages. If this cannot be done, shame on you in government and the pharmaceutical industry, globalism can kill us; it has and it will.

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ANARCHY AND DEMOCRATS

Contents

A group of people in white clothes marching down the street.Anarchy has plagued our nation throughout its history. Anarchy has been primarily associated with the Democrat Party and the political left. The notable exceptions were the abolitionists marauding western territories prior to the Civil War, the non-violent mid-twentieth century civil rights movement led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., MLK, and the 2021 Capital Riot. In the twenty-first century, the left supports one of the left’s most violent group of anarchists, ANTIFA, and the 2020 riots associated with Black Lives Matter, BLM, protests following the death of George Floyd. The left leaning groups involved in this association include much of the Democrat Party and self-proclaimed communists, socialists, progressives, liberals, moderates, and most activists in our unions, education systems, the mainstream news media, and entertainment industries. In my opinion, the verbal abuse, directed against the Republican Party, especially conservatives and those who support the Make America Great Again agenda as well as social conservatives and Biblical Christians, who support the Biblical church and family and oppose abortion as murder, illegal protests at the homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices, and targeting these Justices and their families during daily activities, are all forms of anarchism often employed by anarchists. When Democrats, mainstream media personalities, educators, and entertainment celebrities on the left fail to condemn verbal abuse, violence, and lawlessness, encourage confrontation perpetrated by those on the left, they become de facto progressive anarchists, organizers, and provocateurs who promote anarchy.

Discussing anarchy requires clear understanding of three terms. The Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary provides definitions of the terms relevant to this discussion of anarchy and Democrats. Anarchy is defined as a state of lawlessness or political disorder; ¦ the absence or denial of any authority or established order; or the absence of order. Anarchist is defined as a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power; believes in, advocates, or promotes anarchism or anarchy; or uses violent means to overthrow the established order.Anarchism is defined as the advocacy or practice of anarchistic principles. Various connotations of these terms will be relevant throughout this discussion.

Unfortunately, human beings are prone to violence to settle disagreements or dissatisfaction with their current situation beginning with the Biblical Cain and Abel. Our founding generation was not immune to this defect in humanity. John Jay, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, SCOTUS, only wrote four of the 85 Federalist Papers because he suffered a severe and debilitating broken leg during a New York City riot between supporters and opponents of ratification of our Constitution. Consequently, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote most of the Federalist Papers supporting ratification.

Democrats, Slavery, Civil War, Lincoln’s Assassination, and Reconstruction

The issue of slavery and civil rights have been one of our greatest sources of controversy, anarchy, violence, and division throughout our history as a nation. In the years preceding the Civil War, congress sought to maintain a Senatorial balance between slave and free states as western territories sought statehood. The abolitionist John Brown promoted anarchy and led a group of mercenary anarchists that attacked pro slavery communities in the Kansas territories; and later, 1859, attacked and occupied the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry attempting to arm a slave insurrection. He failed, was hung for treason, but stirred emotion on both sides of the slavery issue. Within two years, the nation was at war over slavery.

In my opinion, the Democrat Party was on the wrong side of the slavery issue and civil rights movement from the founding of the party in the 1830’s. Democrats supported slavery in the South and started the Civil war with the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861. The cost of that act of violence to United States citizens was over 600,000 deaths and an untold number of disabled veterans on both sides of the war. Although it is impossible to know, the assignation of President Lincoln probably precluded the opportunity for both reconstruction and reconciliation with the former Southern slave states. In the North, radical Republicans gained power in the US Congress and bought retribution against the White southerners who brought war to the nation.

Historically, the assignation of President Lincoln had a profound impact on the arc of race relations and civil rights in our nation. Lincoln’s reconstruction plan sought reconciliation with the South which should have changed the way southern Whites viewed and treated former slaves who became freedmen. A conciliatory Reconstruction plan that did not deny thousands of former Confederate soldiers the right to vote while giving the vote to freedmen may have had future benefits. Balancing the ratio of freedmen and Whites for non-elected positions of authority in government may not have stirred such resentment among Whites toward Blacks. Without President Lincoln’s leadership, the punitive Radical Reconstruction Plan sent Yankee carpetbaggers into the south with northern financing for reconstruction of all segments of the economy and re-education regarding former slaves. Southerners were denied good financing rates for reconstruction projects. Southerners who had opposed the war, scallywags, considered traitors by most southern Whites, were given positions of authority in state and local governments and better financing for their reconstruction efforts. While only 30% of the White population of the South and 1% of the Confederate soldiers owned slaves prior to the Civil War, the punitive measure of placing freedmen in unelected positions of authority over Whites created anger and animosity. From the southern perspective, placing inferior humans in positions of authority was an unimaginable insult because freedmen were previously property that any White, and some Blacks, could buy and own just a few years prior. This punitive Reconstruction policy may have been the strongest factor contributing to the Jim Crow laws enacted after the Democrat Party regained control of the South. The advantages given the carpetbaggers and scallywags made them reviled groups; and they suffered retribution after the Yankees left the south at the end of Reconstruction hastened by a national economic depression. Fewer carpetbaggers, more equitable reconstruction financing, less reliance on and financing for scallywags may have reduced resentment of the Yankees, eased the pain associated with their war loss, and reduced the racism that rose in the South after Reconstruction.

With 20-20 hindsight, reconstruction of the infrastructure, economy, and culture of an enemy defeated in war should be based on reconciliation and understanding not revenge and retribution. Based on our experience following the Civil War, the revenge and retribution model gave us 100 years of Jim Crow, racial animosity, violence, anarchy, White supremacists, and the KKK. The same model following WWI brought a Middle East that remains tumultuous to this day and WWII in less than 30 years. After WWII, the victors, primarily the United States, followed a more understanding and reconciliatory model with the Marshall Plan to rebuilt West Germany and Western Europe and a similar plan for Japan. Both of those WWII enemies are now allies.

Democrats, Anarchy, White Supremacists, the KKK, and Jim Crow

According to Democrats are the party of the KKK, many prominent Democrat Party officials were members of the KKK and Jim Crow advocates at some time in their careers until the culmination of the 1960’s Civil Rights era. During the Jim Crow era, Southern Democrats passed poll taxes and literacy tests in their states to prevent African Americans from voting to elect Republicans to Congress. West Virginia Democrat, US Senate president pro temp, and KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd retired in 2010.  Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo became the voice of anarchy and racism in America.  In 1938, he tried to amend the federal work-relief bill in the Senate with a provision to deport 12 million Black Americans to Liberia. That same year, Bilbo voiced his opposition to a federal anti-lynching bill, stating:

If you succeed in the passage of this bill, you will open the floodgates of hell in the South.  Passage of the measure [will bring] the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.

Another influential KKK member of this group was US Senator and later US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who served the court 1937-1971. As a Senator, Black led Filibuster efforts along with Senator Bilbo against federal anti-lynch legislation, thus promoting anarchy. The vast majority of those listed in Ku Klux Klan members in United States politics were members of the Democrat Party. During the 1948 Presidential campaign, Senator Strom Thurmond promoted anarchy when he said the following in a speech met with loud cheers by his assembled supporters:

“I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

White supremacist and the KKK controlled every level of government in the South and at least the U.S. Senate through the filibuster. White supremacists and the KKK were also active in other industrial regions and large cities in the nation. After passage of Civil Rights legislation, overt White supremacy in Southern government at all levels and other industrial areas and big cities took two to three decades to subside.

White Supremacist Race Riots and Massacres

The Pure History List of Race Riots in the United States is exhaustive with many Wikipedia links providing details of the linked riots. Some of the more impactful race massacres and riots are chronicled below. Prior to 1900, most rumored, suspected, or accused transgressions of a Black citizen against White citizens resulted in White supremacist mob attacks against Blacks. The anarchy included lynchings of accused Blacks, mob attacks on Black communities, homes, and businesses which were often burned, and killing Blacks in their communities which often escalated to massacres.

In 1863, a Detroit nonwhite man was falsely accused of sexually assaulting a two White girls. When a White lynch mob was kept away from the accused, they began setting Black neighborhoods ablaze leaving 200 Black Detroiters homeless.

What started as a minor confrontation between White police officers and Black Union Army soldiers led to a massacre in 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee. A mob of White men attacked and destroyed Black neighborhoods, leveling 90 homes, four churches and twelve schools. Several Black women were raped, and 48 people died, all but two of them Black.

The 1866 New Orleans race riot started when Black freedmen along with some former Union soldiers marched to protest newly-legislated Black Codes were attacked by a mob of Democrats. The Democratic mob included policemen from the New Orleans Police Department and former Confederate soldiers.  Shots were fired killing 44 mostly Black people. As a result of this riot, martial law was reinstated; and the First Reconstruction Act was passed in 1867.

In 1887, a few thousand local sugarcane workers in Thibodaux, Louisiana, mostly African Americans, started a three-week labor strike. Strikers demanded increased wages, more consistent pay periods, and payment in US currency instead of special tickets that could only be redeemed at company stores. A state judge who had once owned slaves, put Thibodaux under martial law and declared that African American residents could not leave the city without special passes. The Judge formed a vigilante group to keep the strikers in Thibodaux. When the strikers fired on the vigilante group and killed two of them, mass violence began. For three days, the vigilantes attacked the strikers and their families, executing them on the spot or in the nearby woods. According to official numbers, 35 people died. Historians later estimated that the White vigilantes killed 300 African Americans in this racial massacre.

Wilmington, NC Insurection,1898, After Black newsman was elected Mayor, White supremacist led 2,000 Whites in a riot that ended in re-election of the previous White Mayor. 6-100 Blacks died.

After 1900, African Americans began arming themselves to protect their individual citizens and communities from the anarchy and violence of White supremacists. The inevitable result was an increase in the number of race riots, death, and property destruction in both Black and White communities.

In what would later be known as the Atlanta Massacre, violence broke out on September 22, 1906, when four Black men were falsely accused of raping a white woman. Nearly 2,000 white men took to the streets and killed approximately 100 Black residents.

In 1917, an East St. Louis, Missouri white mob killed nearly 50 people, mostly Black, and drove approximately 6,000 African Americans from the city in retaliation for African American residents arming and protecting themselves after a white man drove through their neighborhoods shooting into Black homes.

When the US entered World War I in 1917, the Third Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment, maned exclusively by African American soldiers, began training in New Mexico. The Battalion was transferred to Houston, Texas where racist tensions over their presence began. When the Houston police violently arrested an African American woman, Battalion soldiers became involved in protecting the woman and violence ensued. Police shot one of the African American soldiers three times but did not kill him. Soldiers of the battalion raided their camp arms room, secured weapons, and marched into town. Once there, the battalion exchanged gunfire with police and fired at civilian buildings. The gun battle lasted throughout the night. 19 people died of gunshot wounds. Leaders of the battalion were court-martialed in the largest such trial in US history. Their attorneys claimed Houston racism, unsuccessfully, as their defense. Nineteen men received death sentences and were hanged. Sixty-three others received sentences of life in prison.

In the Red Summer of 1919, over three dozen cities in the United States suffered race riots including Elaine, Arkansas; Annapolis, Maryland; Syracuse; New York; Washington D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Chicago, Illinois. Thousands of African Americans were driven out of their homes, and more than 250 African Americans were killed in at least 25 riots. The most serious was the Chicago Race Riot lasting13 days. A Black teenager was stoned by a group of White youths for being on an unofficially segregated beach and drowned in Lake Michigan. Police refusal to arrent the White perpetrator, identified by witnesses, started a week the rioting between gangs of Black and White Chicagoans. 15 White and 23 Black people were killed, 537 people injured, and 1,000 Black family’s homes were burned down.

In Rosewood, Florida on January 1, 1923, a White woman claimed she was assaulted by a Black man. Consequently, White supremacist mobs killed of up to 150 Black Americans. One of the first was a local blacksmith, Sam Carter, whose tortured and mutilated body was strung up in a tree for all to see.

The Tulsa Race Massacre and Black Wall Street

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was the worst examples of White supremacy led by the KKK in our history. After WWI, the south saw a rise in violent White supremacist racism, a resurgence of the KKK, and anarchy as the Supreme Court began to reverse Jim Crow laws. By 1919, tensions between the races escalated as lynchings increased throughout the South and race riots occurred in some Northern cities. Armed Blacks from the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma began to show up at courthouses to prevent White lynch mobs from killing Blacks. The main street of the Greenwood District was known as Black Wall Street. According to Michelle Place, executive director of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.

It wasn’t long before the affluent African Americans [of the Greenwood District] attracted the attention of local White residents, who resented the upscale lifestyle of people they deemed to be an inferior race.

I think the word jealousy is certainly appropriate during this time¦. If you have particularly poor Whites who are looking at this prosperous community who have large homes, fine furniture, crystals, china, linens, etc., the reaction is ˜they don’t deserve that.

When a young Black man was accused of sexually assaulting a young White girl, 75 armed Black men went to the court to help the sheriff guard the accused. They were confronted 1500 armed White men and retreated to Greenwood. This confrontation was followed by the Tulsa Race Massacre, anarchy, which lasted over 18 hours from May 31 to June 1, 1921. On June 1, thousands of White anarchists poured into the Greenwood District, looting and burning homes and businesses over an area of 35 city blocks. 1,256 houses were burned; 215 others were looted but not torched. Two newspapers, a school, a library, a hospital, churches, hotels, stores, and many other Black-owned businesses were among the buildings destroyed or damaged by fire. In 2001, the report of the Race Riot Commission concluded that property losses were about $2 million at the time with present value losses estimated as high as $200 million. Between 100 and 300 Greenwood District Blacks were killed and more than 8,000 were made homeless over those 18 hours.

Unfortunately, after the anarchy of the Tulsa Race Massacre, perpetrated by the KKK and other White supremacists, most of whom were Democrats, the sheriff concluded that no sexual assault had occurred and all charges against the young Black man were dropped. The Tulsa Race Massacre remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history.

A detailed Tulsa Race Massacre web search provides ample evidence that Tulsa newspapers catering to the White population fanned the flames of anger among White supremacists in the greater Tulsa area. The search also shows that Oklahoma government at every level failed to protect the Greenwood District from anarchy and   racially motivated looters and arsonists. After Martial Law was declared, the first Oklahoma National Guard units were sent to protect unaffected White neighborhoods. Concurrently, armed White mobs, anarchists, roamed the Greenwood District looting, burning, and killing Blacks throughout a 35-block area of the community. Fire crews refused to fight fires. law officers and guardsmen participated in the looting and carnage, disarmed or shot Blacks trying to protect Black property and citizens, and marched them to areas where they could no longer protect their people or property. Obviously, Oklahoma Democrats supported anarchy in the state and the Greenwood district of Tulsa.

Although T. D.  Evans was a Republican Tulsa Mayor from 1920-1922 when the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre occurred, five of the six proceeding mayors were Democrats including his predecessor. The Tulsa city bureaucracy was still dominated by Democrat appointees many of whom were Klansmen. At the time of the massacre, the Tulsa KKK had over 3,000 members including two future Democrat mayors, at least 40 law officers, 30 firefighters, three county judges, 10 county court clerks, and 10 insurance agents.

In state government, Democrat J.B.A. Robertson, Governor of Oklahoma in 1921 said, A lyncher is a worse menace to a democratic form of government than a Bolshevik who goes about waving a red flag and throwing bombs. Since armed Blacks from The Greenwood District had to protect jailed Blacks from Tulsa area lynch mobs, it is difficult to believe that the actions of the Robertson administration matched his words. No Republican was an Oklahoma Governor between 1907, when the state elected its first governor, and 1963. The state did not elect a Republican Lt Governor until 1990. In 1921, Republicans had a 67% House of Representatives majority for the first time in state history, while the Democrat Party had a 61% Senate majority. Prior to the 1921 legislative session, the Democrat Party controlled both Houses of the Oklahoma legislature with at least a 73% majority in the House and a 71% majority in the Senate. The Democrat Party regained control of both Houses of the state legislature for at least the next three legislative sessions following the Tulsa Race Massacre.

During the Jim Crow era, anarchy and smaller race riots occurred in many Southern cities and some Northern cities like Detroit and Chicago. Several conclusions are possible regarding the state of racism, White supremacy, and the prevalence of the KKK in the Jim Crow era South based on the evidence surrounding the Tulsa Race Massacre. First, Tulsa was not the exception but rather the rule related to the control of government at every level by the Democrat Party, White supremacists, and the KKK in the South. Second, led by Southern Democrat Party members, Jim Crow laws, anarchy, and mob violence including lynching was supported at every level of Southern government including Southern Democrat Senators who filibustered against Federal anti-lynch laws. Finally, White supremacy anarchists led by the KKK perpetrated violence, led lynch mobs, marched in their white robes and hoods through the streets of the South, and burned crosses to intimidate any who opposed them. Although the Tulsa Race Massacre was unique in its scope, White supremacists led lynch mobs and burned houses, churches, and other Black community buildings throughout the South. All the while, leaders of the Southern Democrat Party were silent and refused to stop or confront White supremacy, racism, anarchy, and violence.

Race Riots After the Tulsa Race Massacre until the 1970’s

The Tulsa Race Massacre apparently resulted in a dramatic change in the way African Americans responded to racism, White supremacists, and real or perceived law enforcement or legal system racism. After Tulsa the nation-wide African American community seems to respond to violence or real or perceived racism with violence and anarchy. Race riots are often the result.

The Detroit Race Riot of 1943 was the culmination of several years of increasing racial tensions in the city:   As the WWII Arsenal of Democracy in 1943, the Detroit defense industry was attracting African American workers in large numbers. Detroit, like most U.S. cities at the time was segregated. Consequently, the 200,000 Black residents were forced to live in small, subdivided apartments that often-housed multiple families in 60 square blocks on Detroit’s east side. When the city constructed a Black housing project in a White neighborhood adjacent to a Black neighborhood in 1942, over one thousand Whites supremacists, some armed, lit a cross on fire and angrily picketed the arrival of their African American neighbors. A mob of more than one thousand Whites, including KKK members, some armed, lit a cross on fire and angrily picketed the arrival of their African American neighbors. Racism was also prevalent in Detroit factories. In June of 1943, when some Black factory workers were promoted, white workers slowed or halted production and refused to work beside Black workers in protest. Racial animosity related to both housing and factory tensions soon spilled onto Detroit streets reaching the boiling point in June of 1943. 100,000 Black and White Detroit citizens assembled in Belle Isle City Park when Black and White youth gangs began fights which police controlled by midnight. Two rumors escalated the violence the next day. African Americans in Black Bottom were told that Whites had thrown a black woman and her baby off the Belle Isle Bridge. They formed a furious mob looting White businesses and attacking White individuals. Nearby, an angry mob of Whites were told that Black men had raped a White woman. The White mob attacked Blacks as they exited from city buses on their way to work. As word of both incidents spread, so did the violence. Gangs of each skin color roamed the streets looting, burning, and assaulting people of the other race. After several hours of violence, the Detroit Mayor finally asked President Roosevelt to send U.S. troops to stop the carnage. Nine Whites and 25 African Americans were killed in the Riots of 1943. No White individuals were killed by police, but 17 African Americans died at the hands of police. 675 people were reportedly injured, with damages amounting to two million dollars.

After the US took Guam during World War II in 1944, The African American Marine 25th Depot Company was stationed near the city of Agana. White Marines tried to prevent African American Marines from entering the city for months. Before Christmas, a white Marine fatally shot an African American Marine in a quarrel over a local woman. Although the white Marine was court-martialed, the African American Marines were still outraged. On Christmas Eve, nine African American Marines visited Agana when White Marines opened fire on them. Eight of the African American Marines made it back to their base, gathered reinforcements, and returned to rescue the one who remained in Agana. After learning their friend was safe, they returned peacefully to base. On Christmas day, White Marines attacked the African Americans Marines resulting in a day-long firefight and killing enlisted men in the African American camps. Eventually, the attacks stopped, and many of the people responsible for the violence received court-martials.

The 1965 Watts Riot started when an African American on parole for robbery was arrested for DUI. His family came to the scene of the arrest bringing a Black crowd with them. A Black woman, who the crowd incorrectly thought was pregnant, spat at the police and was roughly arrested. The incident triggered the six-day riot. 34 people died, 1032 were injured, and property damage exceeded $40 million.

The 1967 Newark riot started when two White police officers arrested and beat a Black taxi driver for a minor traffic violation. Rumors that the taxi driver had been killed started five days of rioting destroying much of the district. 26 died and 1,500 were injured.

The Detroit Riots of 1967 began with an early morning police raid of an illegal night club in the Black neighborhood of Virginia Park on July 23. 85 Black party goers were arrested. A crowd grew while police waited for vehicles to transport the accused patrons. The Black crowd began throwing bottles at the police cars still in the area. When a police car was damaged, the police left the area; and the Black crowds began looting area businesses owned or operated by Whites who commuted to the Detroit suburbs. Around 6:30 A.M., the looting turned to burning and soon spread to a 100-block area despite a force of 300 state polices officers. By the time the bloodshed, burning and looting ended after five days, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, most were Black rioters. 1,700 stores were looted, 1,400 buildings were burned, causing roughly $50 million in property damage, 5,000 people were left homeless, and 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service. At the time, the 1967 Detroit Riots were among the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. A commission later determined that the racism that plagued Detroit for nearly 100 years contributed to the anger in the African American community and the resulting riots.

The Civil Rights Movement

By the 1950’s, Republicans and African American Civil Rights leaders led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began actively pursuing national civil rights legislation. Republican President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which was the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Though the civil rights bill passed Congress, Democrat opponents of the act were able to remove or weaken several provisions significantly watering down its immediate impact. During the debate over the law, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, a Jim Crow Democrat, conducted the longest one-person filibuster in Senate history.  The Act allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting, created a commission to investigate voter fraud, and created a civil rights division in the U.S. Justice Department.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act passed Congress with strong Republican support and 36% of the Democrats. 64% of Democrats opposed the legislation. This Civil Rights Act ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. This Act also banned segregation at all places of public accommodation, including courthouses, parks, restaurants, theaters, sports arenas, and hotels. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act barred discrimination by employers and labor unions and created an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the power to file lawsuits on behalf of aggrieved workers. Bill Clinton’s political mentor, Democratic Senator William Fulbright, filibustered the bill for 83 days. Senator Al Gore Sr. voted against the Civil Rights Act and lost his seat as a result.

Two additional Civil Rights acts were signed into law by President Johnson. Both were spear headed by Congressional Republicans to overcome Southern Democrat Senate Filibusters. The 1965 Voting Rights Act banned all voter literacy tests, provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions, and allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes which were later declared unconstitutional. The 1968 Fair Housing Act became law just days after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

Unfortunately, the full benefits of these three landmark Civil Rights Laws would not be fully realized for two to three decades.

Democratic Support of Anarchy from 1970 to 2000

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. King in 1968 was followed by 7 days of riots in 125 cities resulting in 46 deaths and 2600 injuries nationwide.

  • In Washington, D.C. 1200 buildings were destroyed resulting in $27 million in damage.
  • In Chicago, 11 died, 500 were injured, and 200 buildings were damaged costing $10 million.
  • In Baltimore, 6 died, 700 were injured, and $12 million in property damage resulted.
  • In Kansas City, 6 died and 20 were injured.
  • In Cincinnati a Black jewelry store owner accidently killed his wife defending their store from Black robbers and rumors spread that the woman was killed by White policemen. Two were killed, 70 buildings were burned resulting in $3 million in damages.
  • In Trenton, 200 buildings were burned resulting in $2.5 million in damages. Police and firefighters were attacked while responding to false alarms. In Pittsburg, 100 businesses were damaged or burned causing $600,000 in damages.
  • Lesser riots occurred in Louisville, Wilmington, Detroit, and New York.

In virtually all the cities affected by the anarchy of the 1968 MLK riots, Black communities suffered long term adverse economic impacts. The cities suffered from emigration of White citizens to the suburbs and irreversible loss of tax revenue and their economic activity.

In 1971, a Camden, New Jersey, police officer beat Rafael Gonzales to death when he felt threatened by Gonzales during a routine traffic stop. Hispanic residents took to the streets to demand action against the officer after he was not charged with any wrongdoing. Although Camden officials gave in and charged the officer, they let him stay on the job and did not really punish him. Outraged, Camden Hispanics took to the streets again on August 20, 1971. For three days, rioters looted stores and destroyed buildings. A lack of cohesion in the police force led to multiple incidents of police violence. In the end, police arrested 90 people. Eventually, the officer responsible for the death of Rafael Gonzalez was suspended.

The 1980 Miami Race Riot lasted 4 days, caused 18 deaths, 10 Black and 8 White, 300 injured, and 100 million dollars in damages to property in the city through arson and looting.  It required the National Guard to restore order. The riot started after six White Metro-Dade police officers were acquitted by a White male jury of the cover up and murder of Arthur McDuffie, a Black insurance salesman, former Marine, and father of two. McDuffie waws stopped for a routine traffic violation and beaten to death with flashlights.

The 1991 Brooklyn, Crown Heights riots started when a Jewish man driving in a rabbinic motorcade crashed his car into two African American children. African American residents attacked the driver and his passengers, beating him severely. After one of the African American children died because of the crash, African Americans started riots against the Jewish residents. For three days, the riots raged with African Americans and Caribbean-Americans attacking Jewish houses and stores killing one Jewish man. People who did not even live in Crown Heights came to take part in the violence. Among the rioters was Reverend Al Sharpton, who spread anti-Semitic propaganda and organized marches during the riots. The riots remain one of the worst acts of anti-Semitism in US history.

The 1992 Los Angeles Race Riot started after the acquittal of four white police officers who were filmed beating up a black motorist Rodney King who was on probation for a robbery conviction, driving under the influence, and resisted arrest. The riot lasted 2 Days, caused 63 deaths, injured more than 2,300, included thousands of fires, and caused a minimum of $1 billion in property damage. During the riot, White truck driver, Reginald Denny, was pulled from the cab of his vehicle, beaten, and smashed in the head with a cinder block. He was rescued by people from the neighborhood who had been watching the event unfold on television. The trial acquittal set off riots in Atlanta, Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco and San Jose. To end the riot, the California Governor deployed 6,000 guardsmen. President George Bush also dispatched 3,000“4,000 army troops and marines, along with 1,000 riot-trained federal law officers, to help restore order.   In a television interview during the riot, Rodney King, famously asked, Can’t we all get along? Koreatown, situated just to the north of South-Central LA, was disproportionately damaged.

Democratic Support of Anarchy from 2000 to 2022

The 2001 Cincinnati Race Riots lasted 4 days. During the riots, 70 people were injured, White motorists were pulled from their cars and beaten, store and bank windows were smashed, businesses were robbed, over 900 were arrested, and total losses and property damage was estimated at $3.6 million. The riots were a culmination of long-standing racial tension in Cincinnati which peaked when a young African American, Timothy Thomas, was killed by a Cincinnati police officer.

Austin Hsu’s 2018 article discussed the 2014 Ferguson Race Riots, which lasted 10 days. The riots started after a White policeman shoot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed young African American who resisted arrest. In Ferguson, 17 buildings were damaged so badly they were deemed “unsafe structures.” The value of buildings destroyed in the Ferguson area was nearly $4.6 million. Four months after the Michael Brown incident, extra St. Louis County Law Enforcement costs were $4 million. Ferguson suffered from periodic riots on month and year anniversaries of the shooting for nearly two years. One of the worst was after the Missouri grand jury decided not to indict the policer officer on any criminal charges.  Many of those waiting outside the Ferguson Police Department grew violent after they learned that the policeman would not be charged. Multiple buildings were torched, and protesters hurled rocks at parked police cars. National Guard and reinforced law enforcement presence in the area, effectively bringing the protests to a stop.

Circumstances surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown by a white male Ferguson police officer are still disputed by the African American community in Ferguson. According to the policeman, Brown attacked him in his police vehicle for control of his service pistol, until the officer fired his pistol. Dorian Johnson, a friend of Brown and accused fellow petty criminal, said that the policeman initiated the confrontation by grabbing Brown by the neck through the patrol car window, threatening him and then shooting at him. At this point, Johnson ran and hide behind a car, and the policeman pursued Brown. According to the officer, Brown stopped, turned around, and charged him. The policeman shot and killed the charging Brown in self-defense. Johnson contradicted this account, stating that Brown turned around with his hands raised after being shot in the back. The policeman fired twelve shots, including two during the car struggle. Brown was struck six times in the front of his body not in the back as Johnson claimed..

“Hands up, don’t shoot”, or simply “hands up”, is a slogan and gesture originating from the incident and was seen in demonstrations in Ferguson and throughout the United States. The gesture became a rallying cry against police violence. On March 4, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice, under the direction of African American Attorney General, Eric Holder, issued a report on the shooting, which said, “There is no witness who has stated that Brown had his hands up in surrender whose statement is otherwise consistent with the physical evidence” and “our investigation did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said, ‘don’t shoot’.” Consequently, Hands Up, Don’t Shoot! Is Built on a Lie. The news media, national civil rights leaders, and Democrat politicians reported on the lie without critical investigation fomenting further violence, anarchy, and destruction by African Americans in Ferguson and around the nation. The narrative and speculation regarding widespread police violence against African Americans was more important than the truth and facts concerning the Michael Brown shooting.

The 2015 Baltimore Race Riots started after the arrest and police transport injury which eventually caused the death of Freddie Grey. Protests and rioting increased as Grey’s condition worsened and peaked after his death and funeral. During the 16 days of peaceful protests and rioting, 113 police officers were injured, and two civilians were shot, 486 people were arrested, and 350 businesses were damaged or looted.  There were also 150 vehicle fires, including police cars and vans.  Two people were shot and one injured by fire, but there were no fatalities. The cost of building destruction alone was estimated at $9 million. Thousands of police and Maryland National Guard troops deployed to end the anarchy costing millions more.

The 2016 Charlotte Race Riots lasted three days. The anarchy started when bystanders falsely claimed that Keith Lamont Scott was unarmed and shot by a White policeman. Actually, Scott was a violent felon armed with a handgun not registered in his name, The riots resulted in the death of one protester killed by another protester and sixteen police officers were injured. The riots cost Charlotte and North Carolina $4.6 million including police overtime, national guard deployment costs, and the destruction of public property. That number does not include any private property damage.

During the 2020 George Floyd BLM Race Riots at least 25 people were killed and the destruction cost our nation between $1 and $2 billion. Consequently, the cumulative national cost of the 2020 BLM riots was the most expensive year in United States history. The major BLM riots are detailed below.

  • The death of George Floyd sparked a summer of BLM protests and riots in cities around the country. On May 25, 2020, police were called to investigate suspected use of a counterfeit $20 bill by Floyd. Floyd was sitting in a car with two other passengers. Police officers forcibly removed Floyd from the car, handcuffed him, and attempted to place him in a police vehicle. When he resisted placement in the vehicle, he was thrown to the ground where a White Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds[ causing Floyd’s death. Floyd’s death was ruled a homicide. In addition to fentanyl and methamphetamine, the toxicology report from the autopsy showed that Floyd also had cannabinoids in his system when he died. Floyd also had heart disease, hypertension, and an asymptomatic sickle cell trait,  The medical examiner listed Floyd’s death as a homicide and noted the amount of fentanyl in Floyd’s blood was pretty high and could be a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances.  His death was caused by the police subdual and restraint in the setting of severe hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and methamphetamine and fentanyl intoxication, officials from the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner wrote.  The 2020 Minneapolis George Floyd riots cost the Twin Cities an estimated $500 million in damages including $4.8 million to temporarily rent an office building and adapt it to replace the police station burned to the ground by rioters. The mostly peaceful rioters damaged more than 1,500 businesses. Fire department responses were limited due to fear that firefighters could not be protected from rioters.
  • In New York City, Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood mobs rampaged down sidewalks, smashing numerous luxury shop windows to steal merchandise. The looters cost stores tens of millions of dollars in stolen merchandise and damages. A BLM leader and trained Marxist said that the stores were all insured, and the stolen goods were a form of reparations. Police angered protester for use of a tactic called kittling, corralling protesters who had made their way onto the Manhattan Bridge and blocking off both ends of the bridge allowing police to control and arrest the looters and those who became or had been violent.
  • In ROCHESTER, NY, BLM protests were sparked after the death of a 41-year-old black man, Daniel Prude. Prude’s family called police because he was naked in the street and high on phencyclidine, Prude was vomiting and spitting at police who placed a spit hood on his head and forced him to the ground. In less than three minutes he stopped breathing but was revived. A week after is arrest, he died in the hospital. The autopsy report called the death a homicide and listed excited delirium and intoxication by PCP, as contributing factors. A grand jury did not charge the police officers involved. Protests and riots broke out around police headquarters and in spread to many residential areas.
  • The Portland OR BLM riots lasted 100 consecutive days and included vandalism, chaos and, at times, violence.  President Trump deployed federal law enforcement agents to stop attacks on a federal courthouse and other U.S. property. During the clashes, rioters broke windows, set small fires, punctured police car tires with spikes, shined lasers in officers’ eyes, and pelted them with rocks and frozen water bottles. One night, and man was dragged out of his car and beaten by nine or 10 people. When police arrived, the man was unconscious. Fortunately, he recovered. Trump supporter Aaron “Jay” Danielson, 39, was fatally shot as he walked on a sidewalk. Michael Forest Reinoehl, the suspected shooter, was killed by a law enforcement task force sent to arrest him outside Lacey, WA.
  • Chicago “Car caravans” of looters made their way into Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Gold Coast, Irving North neighborhoods, and neighboring commercial districts for several hours. Police made more than 100 arrests and 13 officers were injured, including one who was struck in the head with a bottle. The “pure criminality” included occupants in a vehicle who opened fire on police who were arresting a man they spotted carrying a cash register. Videos of the vandalism showed huge crowds of people smashing their way into businesses and streaming out of the broken windows and doors with clothes and other merchandise.
  • In Kenosha WI, protests erupted in August following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot multiple times. Blake scuffled with three officers who yelled, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” before the gunfire erupted. Crowds destroyed dozens of buildings and set more than 30 fires in downtown Kenosha. In one instance, a Kenosha car dealership reportedly sustained $1.5 million in damage during one night of riots. Damage blamed on rioting in Kenosha exceeded $50 million. Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the killing of two protesters and attempted intentional homicide in the wounding of a third. Rittenhouse claimed that he was defending himself against rioters and was acquitted of all charges.
  • Philadelphia following the October officer-involved shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., an armed Black man reportedly with a mental health history. Wallace’s family has said he was experiencing a mental health crisis when police were called. Officers who arrived at the scene fired 14 shots after Wallace advanced toward the officers despite their orders that he drop the knife he carried. More than a thousand people took to the streets following the shooting, ransacking a Walmart and Foot Locker stores, as well as smaller businesses. Hundreds were arrested, and dozens of police and law enforcement vehicles were damaged during the riots. Meanwhile, more than 50 police officers were injured, including a sergeant who was “intentionally run over” by a pick-up truck driver.

Thankfully, our nation has not experienced major riots of any kind since the George Floyd, BLM, race riots of 2020. Perhaps, the 25 or more lives lost and the billions of dollars the riots cost our nation taught us a valuable lesson. We can only hope.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, the Democrat Party has been the party of anarchy from its inception. The party supported slavery, Jim Crow, and all forms of violence against African Americans until the reluctant acceptance of the 1960’s civil rights legislation by most White Southern Democrat leaders in the late twentieth century. Then, the Democrat Party miraculously became the party of the assassinated MLK and African Americans despite past abuse by Democrats. The Democrat Party’s metamorphosis from supporters of violence and anarchy perpetrated against African Americans to supporters of violence and anarchy perpetrated by African Americans is remarkable to me. Democrats justify this support because of past slavery, Jim Crow, violent White racism, perceived and real law enforcement racism, perceived and real systemic racism in the judicial system, education, economic opportunities, and claimed White privilege, the precepts of Critical Race Theory.

It saddens me when Democrats, national news correspondents and pundits, and African American Civil Rights leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Attorney Ben Crump rush to every city where a Black person is killed of badly injured by police, especially if the police involved are White, and claim racism and police brutality before the facts of the case are known.  These leaders usually incite the Black community to protests which often become violent despite calls for peace. These riots are usually started by BLM activists, members of ANTIFA, or bad apples simply caught up in the moment. In most police encounters with Black people, if the offender simply followed this simple advice, Comply, don’t die, they would not suffer at the hands of police.

Each new situation like those described above has the potential to make another racist old or young white man. Two polar opposite responses to jury verdicts should explain my reasoning. After four White police officers were acquitted in the Rodney King beating criminal trial, the African American community erupted in arson, racial violence, anarchy, and murder against innocent White people and Korean businesses in Koreatown. The end result was the second most costly riots in our history. Sadly, race riots also occurred in other cities around the nation. In contrast, after O. J. Simpson was acquitted in the murder of two White people, his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend, not severely beating them, the White community did not erupt in race riots, violence, or anarchy in the LA area or around the country. Every time African American leaders, Democrats, and the news media rush to microphones, cry systemic racism, and call police officers racists when a Black person is killed or severely injured in a police encounter before the facts are known, the Black community loses respect. This is especially true if the Black person resisted arrest, refused to surrender a weapon, or attacked the police. If the Black community starts protests and the protests devolve into rioting, most carnage destroys or severely damages Black businesses and sections of the city involved which rarely recover economically.

In contrast to the entire anarchy narrative above, the Republican Party and conservatism, including Ultra-MAGA folks who all understand that the United States was built on the foundation of our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage, the traditional family, religious liberty, human rights and the end of slavery, free, fair, and honest elections, small government, states’ rights, capitalism, strong borders, national sovereignty, and a strong national defense. We support the rule of law, the Constitution, and equal opportunities for all because all Life Matters. Black Lives Matter; White Lives Matter; Asian Lives Matter; Native American Lives Matter; Unborn Lives Matter; and Old People’s Lives Matter. In my opinion, it is still time to put America First and Make America Great Again. One can be ideologically Ultra-MAGA without a 2016 or 2024 primary vote for Trump. We’ve never worn white hoods and robes or burned crosses to intimidate our political foes or led mobs to lynch Black people. Contrary to current Democrat, progressive, and news media prognostications, racism and anarchy is the ugly past of the Democratic Party not the current Republican Party and all its supporters.

A woman with blonde hair and pink highlights.For the What’a bouters who will spout January 6, the behavior of the Capital Rioters was abhorrent to me causing me to jump off the Trump Train when it happened. It is important to recall that four of the Capital Police who died committed suicide and the fifth officer died of multiple strokes. Ashli Babbitt was the only person killed during the Capital Riot. Based on at least one video, she did not appear to me to pose a real threat as claimed, but she was still shot to death by a capital policeman. Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who served 12 years on active duty with deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar. When she was killed, she was a member of the Air National Guard serving in the WDC Capital Guardian unit. Why is she dead?

It is time to say to America, Y’all come back now, hear! or Can’t we all just get along?

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HISPANIC ALLEGIANCE TO DEMOCRATS?

CONTENTS

Hispanic allegiance to Democrats is more puzzling to me than Black allegiance to Democrats. As a person who lived in New Mexico twice in my life totaling 30 years, my insight regarding Hispanics comes from personal experience and relationships. Hispanics are predominately Catholic and support traditional Christian values, including the traditional Christian family composed of a father, mother, and their children, the sanctity of life including the unborn, a quality education, hard work, and the value of the individual in the sight of God. Many own small businesses. Since the Democrat Party no longer supports traditional values, small and medium size businesses, and individualism, Hispanic allegiance to Democrats is puzzling to me.

A woman with long brown hair wearing a black jacket.Two recent South Texas Republican primaries and a special election demonstrate, Hispanics may be turning to the Republican Party. Mayra Flores flipped a 100-year Democrat House seat when she won a special election in June 2022. She will have to run again in November 2022. In two other Rio Grande Valley Republican primaries, Monica De La Cruz won outright, and Cassy Garcia was the highest vote getter and leads in polls for the May runoff. The winner will run against incumbent Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar. In a Virginia Republican House primary, Yesli Vega, won the party nomination. Vega said of Hispanics, “They are hard workers, and many have fled their native countries to come here to America to seek better opportunities not just for themselves, but for their children, for their families. Some folks have escaped socialism. These four Hispanic women clearly show a potentially seismic Hispanic shift from Democrat to Republican, especially if they all were to win seats in the US. House in November. Hispanics may be realizing that today’s Democrat Party with its near total rejection of traditional values and conservativism, no longer represents the values traditionally held by many Hispanics. Many are questioning Hispanic allegiance to Democrats and taking a closer look at the Republican Party.

Democrats Should be concerned about the Hispanic vote in 2022 and beyond.

Is Hispanic Allegiance to Democrats Justified?

Heritage

Hispanic allegiance to Democrats is complicated by heritage. Many Hispanics in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California trace their heritage to Spanish settlers who lived in these areas before British settlers came to the thirteen colonies. New Mexico serves as a good example of this complexity. My Albuquerque New Mexico boyhood next door neighbor and friend’s mother came from the poor side of the Baca Spanish Land Grant family of central New Mexico. She, like many New Mexico Hispanics, call themselves Spanish not Mexican because of their lineage. Spanish explorers led by General Francisco de Coronado  searched for the Seven Golden Cities from 1540 to 1542.They looked for these cities in what are now Arizona, discovering the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, the Colorado plateau, wintered along the Rio Grande River between today’s Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, moved their base camp to  Palo Duro Canyon in Texas, and sent an expedition north to Kansas. The expedition was considered a failure because there were no Seven Golden Cities or riches. Spanish explorers were in today’s Southwestern United States 67 years before James Town was founded. Over the next 165 years Spanish settlers moved into the Rio Grande River valley and other river valleys of New Mexico.

Santa Fe, New Mexico was founded in 1606 by Spanish settlers one year before James Town was founded. Santa Fe became the Spanish territorial Capital of Nuevo Mexico in1610, 10 years before the Pilgrims landed on American soil. Santa Fe is the oldest capital in the United States. Albuquerque, currently New Mexico’s largest city, was founded along the Rio Grande River in 1706.  In addition to Spanish Land Grants, Spain granted water rights to Land Grant owners and communities that are legal today. Consequently, many New Mexicans trace their lineage to sixteenth century Spanish families who lived in their state before the Pilgrims landed.

Another example of the complicated history of New Mexico Hispanics is the fact that many have Jewish heritage. The people of the Spanish Empire were threatened by the Spanish inquisition from 1478-1834. For centuries before 1400, the Jewish community in Spain flourished and grew despite periods of severe anti-Semitism. During the fifteenth century, Spanish Jews fell into three categories, converts to Christianity and those who refused to convert, and professed converts who practiced Judaism in secret perceived by the monarchy and inquisition as their greatest Jewish threat.  All were persecuted. During the peak of the inquisition,160,000 Jews accepted exile from Spain rather than convert to Christianity in 1492. The inquisition also spread to the larger Spanish American colonies of Mexico and Peru. As New Mexico was colonized by Spain many of the most remote, isolated, and secluded Hispanic enclaves and small communities were founded by Spanish Jews fleeing the inquisition. These communities tried to hide from colonial leaders; and when they were discovered, many Jews feigned Catholicism and continued their secret practice of Judaism like many of their ancestors had done in Spain. These Jews tried to hide due to the brutality of the inquisitors fearing torture and death. The brutality of the Spanish inquisition finally ended in1834 in the empire.

Although most New Mexico, Spanish Jews converted to Catholicism over the centuries. Many families maintained some Jewish traditions. For example, several years ago, an Albuquerque, television news program aired an Easter Passover segment with a Catholic Priest of Jewish decent. He recounted his annual pilgrimage to a well-hidden grotto in the state. He said that the Ten Commandments were carved in Hebrew in the rock at the back of the grotto. He said that he was a faithful Priest, but made the annual plumage to honor the Jewish part of his heritage. Obviously, Hispanic allegiance to Democrats is influenced by heritage.

Immigration

There are now two significant groups of Hispanic immigrants in Florida. The large Cuban population of south Florida. Cuban Americans, or their parents, fled Castro’s communist dictatorship in Cuba for freedom and opportunity in the United States. Another group of Hispanic immigrants to Florida are the Venezuelans who fled that county’s socialist dictatorship. Both groups have little patience for the socialist tendencies and progressive social values of Democrats. As a solid Republican voting bloc, these Hispanics are an exception to Hispanic allegiance to Democrats.

Despite supporter denials, the 1965 Immigration Act transformed the ethnic and racial demographics of the United States since the act was passed. The chart below demonstrates how the immigration act changed the racial and ethnic make-up of the U.S. population. The Black proportion has remained stable at around 12%. The Hispanic population has almost tripled from 6.4% to 18.7%.  In 1980, the Hispanic population was aboutA bar graph showing the demographic profiles of us population, 1 9 8 0-2 0 2 0. half the size of the Black population. The Hispanic population is now 55% greater than the Black population. The Asian population has also increased from 0.2% to5.9%, a 30-fold increase. The only group that has declined during this period is the White population which has decreased from79.4% to 57.8%, a 37% decrease. The effect of illegal immigration on this population and demographic data could not be determined.

The attitudes of many Hispanics about the United States, America, and immigration may surprise many. For example, during a late twentieth century discussion with a Hispanic rancher and landowner in Northeast New Mexico about the business of ranching, illegal immigration came up.  The Hispanic rancher disdainfully called illegals, wetbacks referring to illegals wherever they crossed our border regardless of their race or ethnicity. Hispanics whose families have lived in what is now the United States for centuries and those who immigrated legally probably have a different attitude toward illegal immigration than many non-Hispanics. Probably, the 2020 census vastly under counted the number of Hispanics because illegals feared participation in the census. Democrats seek a path to citizenship for illegal Hispanics because this group is seen as potential Democratic voters. Hispanics citizens living in Southern border states adversely impacted by illegal immigration are questioning their Hispanic allegiance to Democrats.

Education

Hispanics, like most Americans, are dissatisfied with public education in their communities. Covid19 school lockouts and remote learning affected Hispanic students, like most minorities, more dramatically than White students. Many Hispanics object to their children being subjected to Critical Race Theory, CRT, Critical Gender Theory, CGT, and Queer Theory, QT, in the public schools their student attend. The time spent on these topics robs them of the time that should be spent on core curricula. This issue is confirmed by a 2017, Pew Research Center article by Drew Desilver,  U.S. academic achievement lags that of many other countries which is discouraging. Fifteen-year-old U.S. students rank 24th in science and reading, and 38th in mathematics, compared to students in other countries of the world. The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, sometimes called the national report card, for reading and math. The chart below shows the education gap between Hispanic (Green), Black (Orange) , and White (Blue) students. The scores are on a 500-point scale.

A line graph showing the number of jobs in each area.

The Educational Opportunity Monitoring Project: Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gaps

All U.S. students are below 300, Moderately Complex Procedures and Reasoning. The White students are at the Numerical Operations and Beginning Problem Solving level, 50% of the top score and well below the rest of the World. No parent, including Hispanics, should be satisfied with public education in the United States today. New Mexico is a majority Hispanic state which has been controlled by Democrats since 1932, 90 years, ranks 50th in quality of Education, with a high school graduation rate of only 74%.

Marxist progressives, who control our public schools have controlled curriculum designed to fundamentally change our nation. The Miseducation of America by David Goodwin, President of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, is a review of the Fox Nation series, The Miseducation of America. Goodwin observes that progressives started their transformation of American education in 1907 with the Gary Plan. The progressive goal was complete removal Christianity and traditional values from Americ’s schools and elimination of Americ’s Christian identity. This identify perpetuated the Western Christian, Judeo-Christian values, the idea that men, all people, should be educated to be well-rounded, refined in intellect, morals, and physicality, so training of both the body and mind is important. Goodwin describes the conflict between the progressive vision and the Christian vision for America as follows:

The progressive narrative tells us that our civilization today is the result of human progress over time, and now that science rules the day, they can improve civilization even further if given enough power and control¦. [The] Christian narrative teaches something else. Our present culture and civilization will remain great only insofar as it aligns with Truth. Because Truth is fixed and unchanging, we should guard our society from influences that conflict with it, and we should strive to pursue Truth¦. The Progressives at the turn of the 20th century knew what they were up against. As long as the Western Christian philosophy defined our culture and civilization, the progressive agenda would be limited¦. Progressive philosophies, such as Critical Theory, Marxism, and the influence of the Frankfurt School, dominate education. Today, our schools are far from the engine of freedom that classical Christian education once was.

The progressive thinkers behind this plan were, and still are, primarily atheistic Marxists who used Frankfurt School concepts of critical theory to challenge all aspects of Western civilization, Biblical Christianity, and capitalism. In the late 1960’s, Herbert Marcuse, a Frankfurt School critical theorist and Father of the new left, observed that a propaganda based educational dictatorship would be required before radical Marxist change could occur in Western Europe and the United States. Marcuse determined that working class labors were no longer a subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change in western society and culture. Consequently, he identified anti-capitalists, radical intellectuals, the socially marginalized, exploited, persecuted outcasts and outsiders of ethnic minorities, people of color, the unemployed, and the unemployable as trainable revolutionaries. Ethnic and gender study programs were established in most universities to train the envisioned revolutionaries. CRT, CGT, and QT, were, and still are, useful tools for these revolutionaries. The educators trained for this transformation of our nation now teach our children, including Hispanics, from Preschool to Ph.D., Marxism PP. The Democrat Party supports state departments of education, school boards, and teachers’ unions promoting social indoctrination curricula that take time from teaching reading, science, and math. Consequently, Democrats are failing to properly educate our children, including Hispanic students. The question is, Is Hispanic allegiance to Democrats still Justified.

Poverty

In his 2020 United States Census Bureau article, Poverty Rates for Blacks and Hispanics Reached Historic Lows in 2019, John Creamer observed that the poverty rate for the United States was 10.5%, the lowest since 1959. Poverty declined rapidly between 2017 and 2019 for all race and ethnic groups, especially Hispanics and Blacks. In 2019, the poverty rate for Blacks was 18.8%; and for Hispanics, it was 15.7%, both historic lows, but double the rate for Whites.

A chart showing the median household income for blacks and hispanics.

Household income for these two groups also increased more rapidly between 2018 and 2019 but remained $20,000 below White household income. Poverty in the general Hispanic community has been a problem for 70 years primarily in large metropolitan areas controlled by Democrats who have failed to solve this problem. In New Mexico, controlled by Democrats almost entirely since 1932, economic growth and poverty are major issues. The state ranks 40th in per capita consumption, 48th in per carta disposable income, and 43rd in teen pregnancy rate which usually corresponds with single female parent families. Fatherless families are a major contributor to poverty. Since Democrats have been unable to relieve Hispanic poverty, is Hispanic allegiance to Democrats still Justified?

Crime

Poverty is also corelated with crime. According to the 2015 article, Latino Populations and Crime in America by Idelisse Malave and Esti Giordani, 22% of inmates in federal, state, and local prisons/jails are Hispanic. Information on Hispanic crime is hard to find because the FBI has not collected data over the years by ethnicity. This is unfortunate since Hispanics make up about 19% of the U.S. population with a large share of children under eighteen. In California and Texas, two states with large Hispanic populations that do track ethnicity, Hispanic felony and misdemeanor arrests were 40% and 36%, respectively. Nine out of ten Hispanic federal offenders were convicted of one of two offenses: immigration and/or drug trafficking related crimes. Hispanics account for almost half (46%) of all documented gang members in the United States. Around 16% of Hispanic prisoners under state jurisdiction were convicted of drug related crimes. Hispanics accounted for over 45% of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) federal arrests and convictions in federal court. Surprisingly, the authors reported that despite the high numbers of documented Hispanic gang members, only 3% of young Hispanics aged sixteen to twenty-five said that they are now or have ever been in a gang. In contrast, the authors also reported that about 25% of second-generation youth have been convicted of committing a crime, compared to 17% of immigrant Hispanic youth. The charts below provide an interesting story about crime victims. 44% of Hispanic victims are Hispanic; 48% are White. Similarly, 35% of Black victims are Black; 50% are White. In contrast, 88% of White victims are White; only 2.4% of White victims are black, and 8.2% are Hispanic. Sadly, Hispanic on Hispanic crime is worse than Black on Black crime.

A pie chart showing the number of victims attacked by hispanics.

Race and Crime: Who Attacks Whom? 

Hispanics have a different view of Law enforcement than African Americans according to the authors of this article, when they wrote:

Surprisingly, Hispanic communities, living within walking distance of crime and drugs, and with residents frequently stopped and questioned by local and federal law enforcement, still have confidence in this justice system. Many Hispanics believe that law enforcement officers actually do a good job of protecting them and that the courts treat them fairly. As more and more data surfaces, will their confidence erode?

Education, poverty, and crime all have an interrelated impact on the quality of life and opportunities afforded residents of every community including the greater Hispanic community. In states with large metropolitan areas controlled by Democrats, Democrats often control state governments as well. In some instances, Democrats have been in control for 70 to 100 years or more. Has education, poverty levels, or crime rates improved under the thumb of Democrats? If the answer is no, then it is reasonable to ask this question, Is Hispanic allegiance to Democrats still justified?

The Assault on Hispanic Culture

As an outsider, the assault on Hispanic culture and society seems to contribute to many of the issues adversely affecting Hispanics. From my perspective, asking pointed questions designed to promote critical thinking and dialog, is the least provocative way to approach the issues. First, Does the progressive assault, on traditional values, morality, and ethics in the overall American culture and society, contribute to Hispanic issues related to education and the noted racial and ethnic disparities in education, poverty and fatherlessness, healthcare, and crime? The answer to problems related to these issues is a resounding yes for both Whites and Hispanics; but Why?

A quote from joseph stalin on the side of a black background.

The answer lies in the Frankfurt School’s application of critical theory to move people and cultures to accept atheistic Marxist progressive ideology as the bases of governance and society. Critical theory uses every academic discipline and most aspects of our culture to promote the revolutionary, transformational change they envision for the United States. Three of the most important disciplines used by critical theorists to accomplish their goals are psychiatry, psychology, and sociology. Research projects are developed and statistically designed by researchers in these disciplines to support the tenants of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Queer Theory, and attack Christianity, traditional values, and our system of governance.

Elimination of Christianity and our traditional Judeo-Christian values as major influences on American culture and society, is the primary goal of Marxist progressives. In my opinion, progressives oppose Christianity for several reasons. First, both Judaism and Christianity teach that each individual is important to God; and individualism is an anathema to Marxists since their success depends of the individual’s subjugation to the collective. Consequently, the individual is worthless compared to the value of the collective. In contrast, Biblical Christianity teaches that the individual has infinite value because God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still Sinners, Christ (God’s only Son) died for us (each individual) (Romans 5:8 NIV). The value of the individual is magnified by the fact that

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs “ heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:16-17 NIV).

As joint heirs with God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, each Christian individual has infinite value in the sight of the God. Marxist philosophers have expressed their disdain for the role of Christianity in promoting the individual. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote,

Christianity alienated man’s communal character as a species into individual relationships with an external being resulting in the rise of individualism¦. The essence of Man is contained only in community, in the unity of Man with Man¦. [In the relationship between] ‘I and Thou,’ [Christ had become] ‘Thou.’ [Religion was misdirected].

Engels observed that the abstract subjectivity of individualism to be a problem of the Christian-Germanic view of the world and the Christian state. Accordingly, the free and spontaneous association of men would lead to an ever certain victory over the unreason of the individual.

The second reason progressives oppose Christianity is the relationship between the Christian Church and traditional Christian family to the nurture and training of each generation of Christian individuals. Evangelism, conversion of non-Christians, is a primary task of Christian churches and individuals. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Each person on earth is individually valued and loved by God. While discussing the church and religion in The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote, Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. In A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Nikolai Bukharin wrote, religion [especially Christianity] must be opposed actively [since it would take too long for it to] die out of its own accord.

The traditional Christian family with a father, mother, and their children is another reason progressives oppose Christianity. The Christian family serves the same basic function as the Christian church with the primary emphasis on their children. This family model does not fit the preferred progressive family model. It is both hierarchical and patriarchal, an anathema to LGBTQ+ activists and social Marxists. Marxist, progressive opposition to the traditional family is clear. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois (ruling class, landowners, and capitalists) family based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.

In The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions, Robert Briffault observed that paternal families were a product of economic systems where property inheritance by individuals was important to society. Briffault’s vision for the future family is not traditional. He concluded:

¦The expectation that the decay of the patriarchal family as a result of the serious crisis of the individualistic, competitive economy would increase, and that a society no longer characterized by competitiveness would be able finally to release social emotions which went beyond the narrow and distorting circle of family.

Friedrich Engels viewed the Bourgeois, traditional Biblical family, as an institution of male dominance in which the wife simply provided heirs for legal transmission of property to succeeding generations in exchange for sustenance. Engels considered the relationship a form of prostitution. Michele Barrett defined family as simply kinship arrangements or the organization of a household. This view is consistent with the current demands of the LGBTQ+ agenda. The role of the Christian family in relation to raising strong Christian individuals is a significant reason that progressives oppose Christianity.

Thirdly, progressives oppose Christianity because of the relationship between individualism and capitalism. They understand that Christianity produces individuals who are confident, self-reliant, well-rounded, refined in intellect, morals, and physicality, potential capitalists and entrepreneurs. Progressives know that virtually every major corporation was founded by one or a few individuals who had confidence in our Constitutional, capitalistic, economic system to risk starting their business. Since Marxist progressives oppose capitalism, Christianity must be opposed and every level. A fact that most progressives refuse to admit.

The cultural weapons used by progressive Critical Theorists to deliver their ideas to the people of the United States for this assault traditional values include the news media, movie industry, music, television, advertising, fashion, and literature. Movies, television, music, and literature routinely portray extra-marital sex, including bi-sexual and homosexual characters, and unmarried co-habitation as acceptable. The behavior occurs in most prime-time television programming and advertisements viewed by our children. On these venues, children are exposed to hundreds of violent acts each year. Although criminals usually suffer consequences for crime in hourly dramas, seasons long series like the Sopranos and Empire depict the lavish wealth potentially generated by crime and drug empires. The events portrayed tell children that non-traditional sex and families are acceptable, and carefully done, crime pays.

Democrats have moved to the far progressive left. Democrats support open borders and illegal immigration, education that is failing Hispanic and other minority students who suffer the most, programs that fail to improve the economic wellbeing or reduce poverty of Hispanics and most minorities, defunding police leaving Hispanic neighborhoods less protected, criminal justice reform that returns criminals to the streets almost immediately without real punishment, and an assault on traditional values important to Hispanics. With all that Democrats do for Hispanics. Is Hispanic allegiance to Democrats still Justified?

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BLACK ALLEGIANCE TO DEMOCRATS?

BLACK ALLEGIANCE TO DEMOCRATS CONTENTS

Black allegiance to Democrats is puzzling to me. Historically, the relationship between African Americans and the two major political parties in the United States Is characterized by a switch in allegiance from Republicans to Democrats that occurred during the first 40 years of the twentieth century. Several factors contributed to this change in party affiliation and subsequent Black allegiance to Democrats. My question is, Is this allegiance still Justified?

Black Allegiance to Republicans from the Civil War to the 1940’s
A group of men sitting in front of each other.

 

 

 

 

 

After the Civil War, Reconstruction brought freedom, opportunity, education, the right to vote, and hold elected public office to freedmen, former slaves. In 1866, the Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act and took control of all Southern state governorships and legislatures, leading to the election of numerous African Americans to local, state, and national offices. Consequently, all of the First Blacks in Congress Were Republicans. African Americans were also installed in other non-elected positions of power throughout the South. Reconstruction resulted in the South’s first state-funded public-school systems, more equitable taxation, and laws against racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodations. Freedmen also bought farms, started businesses, and established many of the traditional Black universities that remain to this day. By 1870, three civil rights Amendments to the Constitution, championed by Republicans, were ratified to prevent the benefits of the 1866 Civil Rights Act from being overturned by future legislatures. Amendment XIII freed former slaves. Amendment XIV gave the rights of citizenship to all former slaves and all those born in the United States. Amendment XV ensured the right of former slaves to vote. Sadly, the punitive implementation of Radical Republican Reconstruction turned most southerners into White supremacists with the first KKK groups forming by 1867. Democrat anarchists and White supremacists were controlled under martial law and suppression by Yankee solders. Until the end of Reconstruction in the mid-1870’s, Southern state governments were controlled by Republicans including blacks, carpetbaggers,” and “scalawags.” Consequently, protected Freedmen prospered during and after Reconstruction despite subsequent, restrictive Jim Crow laws.

The 1876 Presidential election between Democrat Samuel B. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was one of the most contentious in US history. By midnight election day, Tilden lacked one electoral vote needed to win; and he was leading the popular vote by 250,000. However, Republicans refused to accept defeat, and accused Democrats of intimidating and bribing African American voters to prevent them from voting in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, the only remaining Republican states in the South. According to the article, Compromise of 1877,  after it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from those three southern states, a bipartisan congressional commission was set up to resolve the election issue. While the commission worked, a secret meeting between Republicans and moderate southern Democrats negotiated an agreement that gave Hayes the victory in exchange for withdrawal of all federal troops from the South. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic once again ending the Reconstruction era.

Consequently, the Democrat Party regained control of the US House of Representatives and Southern State governments. Between the mid-1870’s and the early twentieth century, rulings by the United States Supreme Court restricted or overturned many of the civil rights granted to freedmen by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and Constitutional Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV. The fallacy of the living constitution concept where the law evolves with social mores is clear in the Supreme Court decisions that reversed the original intent of Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV by upholding Jim Crow laws including the idea of segregated separate but equal facilities did not violate the Constitution. In many respects, African Americans, most of whom lived in the South, were abandoned by Republicans when they were once ” stripped of their voting rights. Despite this, many African Americans both North and South maintained commitments to the Republican Party.

Great Migration Changed the Black Population from Rural to Urban

The Great Migration, relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West, from about 1916 to 1970, was probably the most significant factor in the political party affiliation reversal by African Americans. In the decade between 1910 and 1920, the Black population of major Northern cities grew by large percentages, including 66% in New York City, 248% in Chicago, 500% Philadelphia, and 611% in Detroit. By 1970, when the Great Migration ended, its demographic impact was unmistakable. In 1900, 9 of 10 Black Americans lived in the South, and 3 of 4 Southern Black people lived on farms. In contrast. the South was home to only half of the country’s African Americans, with only 20% living in the region’s rural areas in1970. This migration created a Black urban culture that would exert enormous influence for decades including eventual Black allegiance to Democrats.

Two factors were the primary causes of the great Migration. First, the outlawed KKK and White supremacists continued underground activities using acts of intimidation and violence including lynching Blacks to enforce Jim Crow Laws throughout the South. Second, a shortage of laborers became acute in Northern industrial centers, as WWI put an end to European immigration to the United States. Although the Great Depression slowed the migration, labor shortages resumed during WWII. During the periods of active migration, recruiters pursued African Americans with promises of good jobs and a better life in the industrial cities of the North, Midwest, and West. This activity offended many southern while supremacists.

Black residents ended up creating their own cities within big cities, fostering the growth of a new urban, African American culture. One of the most prominent examples was Harlem in New York City, a formerly all-White neighborhood that by the 1920s housed about 200,000 African Americans. Harlem became an important part of the artistic movement known first as the New Negro Movement and later as the Harlem Renaissance, which would have an enormous impact on the culture of the era. The History of African Americans in Detroit article reports that between1910 and 1930, the Black population of Detroit increased during the  great migration from under 6,000 to over 120,000, a city within a  city, and Detroit became the fourth largest city in the country. As in other cities, Black people were recruited for work in Detroit industries during WWI and WWII. Culturally, the African American community fostered the development of the Motown Record Corporation in 1960, according to Motown. From 1961 to 1971, Motown had 110 top 10 hits. Top artists included the Supremes with Diana Ross, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5. Related record label hit artists included Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, the Miracles, the Temptations, the Contours, Edwin Starr, Martha and the Vandellas, the Velvelettes, the Spinners, the Monitors, and Chris Clark. Smokey Robinson said of Motown’s cultural impact:

In the 1960’s, We were not only making music, we were making history. I recognized the bridges that we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers that we broke down with music. I would come to the South in the early days of Motown and the audiences would be segregated; and the kids were dancing together and holding hands.

The Greenwood District of Tulsa Oklahoma, with a population of 10,000, was another Black city within a city. Greenwood Avenue, known Black Wall Street, was the epicenter of this vibrant, affluent community.

After being disenfranchised in the South, urban African American centers provided the opportunity to begin a new era of increasing African American political activism as they found a new place for themselves in public life in the cities of the North, Midwest, and West. The civil rights movement directly benefited from this activism.

Unfortunately, the influx of African Americans to Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities caused animosity among Whites because they were competing for jobs and housing. The result was a rise of racial tension with White supremacist including KKK activity beginning in 1915. The summer of 1919 began the greatest period of interracial strife in U.S history including a disturbing wave of race riots in Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; Phillips County, Arkansas; and Omaha, Nebraska. The most serious was the 1919 Chicago Race Riot lasting13 days. A Black teenager was stoned by a group of White youths for being on an unofficially segregated beach and drowned in Lake Michigan. Police refusal to arrent the White perpetrator, identified by witnesses, started a week the rioting between gangs of Black and White Chicagoans. 15 White and 23 Black people were killed, 537 people injured, and 1,000 Black family’s homes were burned down.

Two years later, tensions between the races escalated as lynching increased in the Tulsa Oklahoma area. Armed Greenwood Blacks began to show up at courthouses to prevent White lynch mobs from killing Black people. When a young Black man was accused of sexually assaulting a young White girl, 75 armed Black men went to the courthouse to help the sheriff guard the accused. They were confronted by 1500 armed White men and retreated to Greenwood. This confrontation was followed by the Tulsa Race Massacre, which lasted over 18 hours from May 31 to June 1, 1921. On June 1, thousands of White anarchists poured into the Greenwood District, looting, and burning homes and businesses over an area of 35 city blocks. 1,256 houses were burned; 215 others were looted but not torched. Two newspapers, a school, a library, a hospital, churches, hotels, stores, and many other Black-owned businesses were among the buildings destroyed or damaged by fire. In 2001, the report of the Race Riot Commission concluded that between 100 and 300 Greenwood District Blacks were killed and more than 8,000 were made homeless over those 18 hours.

Unfortunately, after the Tulsa Race Massacre, the sheriff concluded no sexual assault had occurred; and he dropped all charges against the young Black man. The Tulsa Race Massacre remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history

The Black Conversion from Republican to Democrat

The Wikipedia articles, Democratic Party (United States) and History of the Republican Party (United States) both indicate that African Americans favored Republicans from the Civil War until 1936. In the article on Republicans, A line graph showing the number of civil rights act and republican studies. Paul Kleppner provides data showing that Northern Blacks

voted 60% Republican throughout the late nineteenth century. According to the article, When did Black Americans start voting so heavily Democratic?, the African American conversion from Republican to Democrat occurred between the 1936 and 1944 elections; and Black allegiance to Democrats became a consistent, dependable, political reality.

According to Black-American Members by Congress, all African Americans serving in the United States Congress from 1869 through 1935 were Republicans. Conversely, all the African Americans serving in the US Congress between 1935 and 1967 were Democrats. From 1935 to the present, most African Americans serving in the US Congress are members of the Democrat Party demonstrating solid Black allegiance to Democrats. From 1869 when the first African Americans served in the US Congress through the end of Reconstruction in1877, the number of African Americans serving gradually increased from three to eight in 1875. As soon as Reconstruction ended the trend reversed. In 1877, four African Americans served; and in 1879, there was only one serving. From 1879 until 1945, only one African American served in Congress in all but four congresses. Many congressional sessions during this period were devoid of African Americans. Three serving in a session of congress was the most occurring throughout this period. From 1879 through 1929, a few African Americans serving in Congress were from the South despite voter suppression and Jim Crow laws. From 1901 to 1929, no African Americans served in Congress; and between 1929 and 1967, there were no Republican African Americans in Congress. From 1967 to 1979, Senator Edward Brooke, III of Massachusetts, was the only Republican African American in the US Congress. In 1979, Republican Representative Melvin Evans of Vermont served a single term. From 1979 to 2009, all the Congressional African Americans were Democrats with the exceptions of 1995 when Republican Gary Franks from Connecticut and Independent Victor Frazer of Vermont who each served one term in the House and 1997 when Republican, Julius Watts, Jr. of Oklahoma started three terms in the US House. Watts was the only African American Republican in Congress from 1997 to 2003. Between 2003 and 2011, all African Americans in Congress were Democrats when South Carolina elected Republican Tim Scott to the House. In 2013, Tim Scott was elected to the US Senate. In 2015, African American Republican Mia Love of Utah, who served two terms until 2019, joined Scott in Congress.  In 2017, Republican William Hurd of Texas, who served one term, joined Love in the House and Scott as the three African Americans Republicans in Congress. In the current congress, Senator Tim Scott is the only Republican African American serving. Clearly, this information demonstrates solid Black allegiance to Democrats.

Factors Affecting Black Conversion from Republican to Democrat

In their 2020 article, Why are Blacks Democrats?, Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, discussed, what are to me, a perplexing set of circumstances resulting in Black allegiance to Democrats.  African Americans are strong supporters of traditional values which is unique among most Democratic supporters; but, hey are not Republican. They note that since the 1960’s, the Black middle and upper classes have grown significantly while experiencing substantial diversification of more moderate racial, social, economic, and political views. In my opinion, this conservatism along with the strong traditional, Biblical Christian, values of a large segment of the greater Black Christian community, should result in renewed allegiance with Republicans. Nevertheless, Black allegiance to Democrats remains strong.

Democrat Support for Organized Labor

The Democrat Party was committed to organized labor. Black people moved out of the deep South to work in the factories of industrialized cities. Consequently, Democrat support for organized labor attracted African Americans to Democrats. African American participation in the early organizational phase of the labor movement brought exposure to the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). According to Communists in the United States labor movement (1937“1950) , the CPUSA also supported Civil Rights and creation of Fair Employment Practices Committees (FEPC) which promoted equal treatment of Black workers in unions with Black membership. In many UAW locals, White members engaged in hate strikes to protest hiring or promotion Black workers in their plants including the massive Detroit race riots in 1943. At the 1943 UAW Convention, delegates could not agree that the FEPC head should always be Black. The UAW resolved the issue by deciding that they would not take any stand on civil rights since it was outside the union’s economic sphere.

The CPUSA was active in organizing labor unions in the first half of the twentieth century. The CPUSA actively supported several service and small industry unions having significant African American membership. They helped organize most of the major unions of the country including the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), United Auto Workers (UAW), United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), now the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUEW), International Woodworkers of America (IWA), and the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU). From the mid-1930’s through WWII and the late 1940’s, the relationship between the CPUSA, union leadership, and our government was strained and at times, violent.

After the communist revolution in Russia, our nation distrusted communism. However, the CPUSA was a positive force for the labor movement which welcomed their contributions until power struggles within the various unions emerged. To assure the public that communists did not control the CIO, their 1940 conference resolved to condemn Communism, along with Nazism and fascism, as “inimical to the welfare of labor.” As the US military built up in 1940 and 1941 increased, US Secretary of War decided that labor strikes and slowdowns at key facilities were due to the CPUSA’s efforts to block Roosevelt’s military preparedness policy. Strikes at critical facilities were viewed as communist inspired for ideological reasons, rather than for better wages and working conditions. The most important of these strikes was at a bomber plant in June 1941 that built aircraft for the U. S. and Britain. The strike was so serious that the government seized the plant and army troops opened paths through the picket lines to allow workers to enter the plant. In 1946 the Republican Party took control of both the House and Senate. That Congress passed the Taft“Hartley Act, which contained a provision requiring all union officers to sign an affidavit that they were not Communists before the unions could bring a case before the National Labor Relations Board. The UAW expelled most CPUSA leaders who refused to sign the oath. By the early 1950’s, the CPUSA was insignificant in our labor movement.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression started in the United States with a stock market crash on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. The result was a worldwide economic downturn that lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. No group of people, including African Americans, escaped the ravages of the Great Depression. Industrial production in the United States declined 47 %, real gross domestic product fell 30 %, the wholesale price index declined 33 %, and at its highest point unemployment exceeded 20 %. Although the U.S. economy grew between 1933 and 1937, growth remained substantially below long-term trends. In 1937“1938, the U.S. suffered another severe downturn but recovered and grew rapidly by mid-1938. The country’s output finally returned to its long-run trend path in 1942.

During the Great Depression, Union membership increased due to severe unemployment and the passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act  which encouraged collective bargaining and established unemployment compensation for laid-off workers. The role of the CPUSA during the start of organized labor exposed Americans, including African Americans to Marxism. Ultimately, the Great Depression taught people of all social classes the value of economic security and the need to endure and survive hard times. Americans rediscovered the virtues of democracy and the essential decency of the ordinary citizen. Thus, a decade marked by fundamental, even radical, social change ended for most with a reaffirmation of America’s cultural past and its traditional political ideals.

Roosevelt’s New Deal

The New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt,1 FDR’s, response to the Great Depression, appealed to African Americans. The New Deal benefited African Americans especially those who left the South for urban areas in other parts of the nation.  The New Deal included government programs and agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided, jobs, unemployment, and welfare benefits for farmers, the unemployed, youth, the elderly, and African Americans. The New Deal produced a political realignment, between Democrats in the South and in big city machines, and newly empowered labor unions which included African American members, and other ethnic minorities. The realignment allowed Democrats to dominate presidential elections into the 1960s.

The Republicans were split. A minority supported the New Deal; but conservatives opposed the New Deal as hostile to business and economic growth. The majority of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress from 1937 to 1964 were conservatives. Some conservatives thought that the Roosevelt Administration supported communism, not traditional American values. Indeed, many conservatives believed then as now, that the left side of the political continuum is undergirded by Marxist philosophy which dominates their vision for the United States as patriots. Many conservatives believe that the policy initiatives of the New Deal and those of the Democrat Party from that period until today are based on Marxist philosophy. Hence, the fear of communism and its influences in the Roosevelt Administration.

The fact that New Deal policies supported the labor movement and its CPUSA participants contributed to conservative suspicions that the New Deal had its foundations in communism. By 1940, as the Roosevelt Administration prepared for the possibility of war, CPUSA union activities, promoting work slow-downs and strikes, became problematic. The Roosevelt Administration became critical of CPUSA union activities and slowly withdrew its support for CPUSA union activities. Although they had minor influence on policy, the fact that at least a dozen communists established a network of low-level government officials also contributed to conservative suspicions. The largest group worked in the Agriculture Adjustment Administration. They were all purged in 1935. Some moved to other government jobs. Other communists worked for the National Labor Relations Board, the National Youth Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theater Project, and the Treasury and State Departments.

The fact that Roosevelt’s second Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, 1941-1945, was a progressive with a “naive faith in U.S.-Soviet cooperation,” who supported the work and ideas of Nicholas Rrich, a prominent Russian émigré, artist, and peace activist also contributed to conservative suspicions that the Roosevelt Administration was sympatric to communism. Additionally, in mid-1944, Wallace toured the Soviet Union labor camps in Magadan and Kolyma. Although the camps were forced labor camps for decadents, the Soviets claimed the workers were all volunteers. Wallace was totally deceived and indicated that he was impressed by the camps. Consequently, he received a warm reception in the Soviet Union.

In the 1944 election, Wallace was replaced by Harry S. Truman as the Vice-Presidential candidate. Some commentators think that had Wallace become president in 1945, “there might have been no atomic bombings, no nuclear arms race, and no Cold War;” and a President Wallace would have been an appeaser that would have allowed the spread of Communism into countries like Iran, Greece, and Italy. After leaving office, Wallace became the editor of The New Republic, a progressive magazine. He also helped establish the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA), a progressive political organization that accepted members regardless of race, creed, or political affiliation including Communists adding to the perception that Wallace was at least a communist sympathizer.

The New Deal brought mixed benefits for African Americans. On the plus side, Roosevelt appointed an unprecedented number of African Americans to second-level positions in his administration. Although Blacks accounted for about 10% of the total population, the WPA, NYA, and CCC allocated 10% of their budgets to Blacks. They operated separate all-Black units with the same pay and conditions as White units.  New Deal administrators worked to ensure Blacks received at least 10% of welfare assistance payments. The Fair Labor Standards Act helped boost wages for non-White workers in the South.1 Other New Deal policies played a major role in creating new employment opportunities to non-White workers.

With the start of WWII, the ravages of the Great Depression ended; and the benefits of the New Deal spread in the economy. The proportion of African American men employed in manufacturing positions rose significantly. Overtime provided larger paychecks in war industries and average living standards rose steadily. Real wages rose by 44% during the war. The percentage of families with an annual income of less than $2,000 fell from 75% to 25% of the population. In 1941, 40% of all American families lived on less than the $1,500. The median income was $2,000 a year. Eight million workers labored in poverty. From 1939 to 1944, wages and salaries more than doubled. Overtime pay and increased employment lead to a 70% rise in average weekly earnings during the war. Membership in organized labor increased by 50% between 1941 and 1945. The War Labor Board discouraged strikes; and new workers were encouraged to participate in the existing labor organizations resulting in improved working conditions, better fringe benefits, and higher wages. Consequently, workers enjoyed a level of well-being that they had never experienced before.” As a result, consumer expenditures rose by nearly 50% by 1944. Individual savings accounts climbed almost sevenfold during the war. The share of total income held by the top 5% of wage earners fell from 22% to 17% while the bottom 40% increased their share of the economic pie. In addition, during the war, the proportion of the American population earning less than $3,000 fell by half. In 1932, most Americans African voted Republican. However, since Blacks felt the sting of the depression’s wrath even more severely than Whites, they welcomed any help. Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Democrats provided that help. In 1936, almost all African Americans (and many Whites) shifted from the “Party of Lincoln” to the Democrat Party. By the end of WWII, especially in several Northern states, Black allegiance to Democrats was solidified and survives into the 21st century.

New Deal Impacts on African Americans

Unfortunately, many programs were not specifically targeted to alleviate the much higher unemployment rate of Blacks.  Some were even unfavorable to Blacks. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, for example, helped many White farmers but reduced the need of farmers to hire tenant farmers or sharecroppers which were predominantly Black. Thousands of Blacks were thrown out of work and replaced by Whites. On some jobs, Blacks were paid less than the   National Recovery Administration (NRA)wage minimums because some White employers considered the NRA’s minimum wage “too much money for Negrs”. By August 1933, Blacks called the NRA the “Negro Removal Act.” An NRA study found that the NIRA put 500,000 African Americans out of work. In addition, the New Deal was racially segregated as Blacks and Whites rarely worked alongside each other. The largest relief program was the WPA. It operated segregated units, as did its youth affiliate the NYA. Blacks were hired by the WPA as supervisors in the North, but of 10,000 WPA supervisors in the South only 11 were Black. Historian Anthony Badger argues that “New Deal programs in the South routinely discriminated against Blacks and perpetuated segregation.”  Although work camps in the North were initially integrated, by July 1935, practically all the camps in the United States were segregated, and Blacks were strictly limited in the supervisory roles they were assigned. Kinker and Smith argue that “even the most prominent racial liberals in the New Deal did not dare to criticize Jim Crow”.

There was no attempt whatsver to end segregation or to increase Black rights in the South, and several leaders that promoted the New Deal were racist and antisemitic. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, former Chicago NAACP president, was one of the Roosevelt Administration’s most prominent supporters of Blacks. In 1937, when a Southern Senator accused him of trying to break down segregation laws Ickes wrote him to deny that:

I think it is up to the states to work out their social problems if possible. I have never dissipated my strength against the particular stone wall of segregation. I believe that wall will crumble when the Negro has brought himself to a high educational and economic status. Moreover, while there are no segregation laws in the North, there is segregation in fact; and we might as well recognize this.

Although Roosevelt appointed a “Black Cabinet” of African American advisers on race relations and African American issues and publicly denounced lynching as “murder,” he did not push federal anti-lynching legislation since he believed that such legislation was unlikely to pass. Since Southern Democrats were critical to his legislative coalition, he did not oppose Southern Jim Crow laws or support of federal anti-lynch laws to avoid alienating Southern Democrats and endanger New Deal programs.

The fact, that African Americans completely switched allegiance from Republicans, the party of Lincoln, to Democrats by 1948, baffles me. From Civil War until the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the last major modern Cilil Rights legislation, Republicans, not Democrats, championed African American causes. Senate Democrats filibustered or attempted to filibuster every piece of Civil Rights legislation from the first bill passed during the Republican Eisenhower Administration in 1957 to the last passed during the Democrat Johnson Administration in 1968. Although Democrat Presidents signed most bills into law, the votes of Republican Congressmen ensured passage of all the Civil Rights legislation of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Although African Americans benefited economically under FDR, his record on Civil Rights was, in my opinion, appalling. FDR made no effort to eliminate Jim Crow laws, including voter suppression, in the South. He did nothing to stop or reduce segregation anywhere in the nation. His efforts to promote equal employment opportunities for African Americans was marginal at best. He did nothing to promote fair and equitable educational opportunities for African Americans. Finally, and most egregiously, FDR never endorsed passage federal anti-lynch laws in Congress.

Despite the above issues, Black allegiance to Democrats and their poor Civil Rights record between 1877 and 1945 and beyond could be explained by one historical event which haunts me. In 1877, Republicans bought the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for withdrawal of all federal troops from the South. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877, the last three Republican states in the south, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became Democratic ending the Reconstruction era. The Democrat Party gained control of the south ushering in the Jim Crow era, Black voter suppression, segregated equal but separate facilities and institutions, anarchy and violence to keep Blacks in their place, and a rise in White supremacy and the KKK. After about 250 years of slavery, Republicans promised freedom only to basically allow freedom to be snatched away after only 12 years of freedom. This betrayal could explain why African Americans abandoned Republicans for Democrats in the 1940’s.

Modern Black Allegiance to Democrats

Since the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s, Black allegiance to Democrats has been unwavering with at least 80% support throughout the nation. Republican President Dewitt D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was vigorously opposed by Southern Senate Democrats. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite opposition by Southern Senate Democrats and most Southern Representatives in the House, signed all three of the 1960’s Civil Rights Acts into law. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was opposed by 78% of Senate Democrats and 74% of House Democrats. Rev. Dr. Maritn Lother King Jr. was present when Johnson signed the bill into law. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was approved by 75% of the Senate Democrats and 81% of the House Democrats. President Johnson signed the Act into law with King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and other civil rights leaders attending the ceremony. The 1968 Fair Housing Act passed Congress with 76% Senate Democrat approved. All Southern Democrats objected except three and one who abstained. 71% of the House Democrats approved. The Fair Housing Act was signed shortly after the assignation of Dr. King. The fact that two of the three 1960’s Civil Rights laws were approved by Congressional Democrats, who were in the majority; and all three bills were signed into law by President Johnson, a Democrat, assured Black allegiance to Democrats from then until now.

The Johnson Administration also established numerous policies and legislation that strengthened Black allegiance to Democrats. After the assignation of President John F. Kennedy in November of 1963, President Johnson was sworn into office and began his work to create a Great Society using his War of Poverty as his main tool. The Great Society Executive actions and legislation he proposed were the most aggressive since Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Great Society included the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act establishing the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Job Corps to help the underprivileged break the poverty cycle by helping them develop job skills, further their education and find work, the National Work Study Program to help students pay for college, loans and guarantees for employers to provide jobs to the unemployed, provide funds to establish agricultural co-ops, aid to help unemployed parents to enter the workforce, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start preschool programs, the 1965, Elementary and Secondary Education Act guaranteed federal funding for education in low-income school districts, the 1965 Housing and Urban Development Act provided federal funds to cities for urban renewal and development, the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act since the arts and humanities belong to all the people of the United States not just private citizens, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to study the humanities and fund and support cultural organizations such as museums, libraries, public television, public radio and public archives, and the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act which ended immigration nationality quotas, although it focused on reuniting families and still placed limits on immigrants per country and total immigration.

In 1968, President Richard M. Nixon set out to revamp the Great Society. Many Republicans still wanted to help the poor while reducing costs. Other Republicans and supporters of traditional values resented what they saw as government handouts and felt the government should butt out of Americans’ lives altogether. Consequently, political infighting for social reform has been raging ever since. Johnson’s Great society initiatives reinforced Black allegiance to Democrats while the Republican efforts to streamline its social programs and the idea that government should butt out of Americans lives altogether pushed African Americas away from Republicans.

From the African American perspective, it is not difficult to believe that the Republican desire to control the costs of the Great Society welfare programs was racist and an effort to reduce their ability to improve their lives, economically, educationally, and culturally. African Americans did not and still do not believe that government should butt out of their lives. The crux of the debate is whether government welfare programs create dependency on government at the expense of self-reliance and hard work and reduce the ability of people to better themselves. Those who believe in traditional values felt that dependance on government creates low self-esteem, hopelessness, and depression. Conservatives also understand the African American middle class and business class was expanding long before the New Deal and Great Society including Jim Crow era expansion when the African American community looked after and supported each other because the government would not help.

According to the 2020 article, Why are Blacks Democrats? by Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird, the purpose of Black allegiance to Democrats is to leverage their political strength as a minority group in a majority based political system, Black Americans have come to prioritize group solidarity in party politics. This partisan loyalty became a norm of group behavior, something you do as a Black person, an expectation of behavior meant to empower the group. As candidate Biden said in the 2020 Presidential campaign, If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t Black! Support for the Democrat Party is insured through social rewards and penalties which recognize compliance and punish defection of racial group members. Interestingly, it is the social and spatial segregation of Black Americans that makes all this work. This decision to ensure collective action for the larger group interest is an effective strategy for leveraging political power, especially in a two-party system. A divided group minimizes the likelihood of responsiveness by either party, but as a partisan voting bloc, Blacks are positioned to push their issues onto the party agenda. If the Democrats fail to be responsive Blacks can threaten to withhold their vote by not turning out. This is how racialized social constraint maintains both Black party loyalty and Black political power. This African American requirement to maintain their individual Black allegiance to Democrats and ensure collective action leverage political power, and :group solidarity is a tenant of Marxism.  The Marxist disdain for individualism will be discussed later in the section, The Assault on African American Culture. The idea that Blacks withhold votes if Democrats do not give them what they want is counterproductive. An abstention is a vote for the other party. The question, Is Black Allegiance to Democrats Still Justified? will be considered in detail in the next section.

A map of the united states with red and blue colors.As the map on the left indicates, Democrat majorities are closely linked to counties with the largest urban populations in their respective states. Many of these urban areas also have higher education institutions and large numbers of progressive academics. Both groups vote for Democrats. In many states, the urban populations constitute most of the state population. Rural areas contain most of the state’s land mass, agricultural land and production, and renewable and non-renewable natural resource production all of which often contribute significantly to the state’s gross economic productivity. Rural voters usually vote Republican. In states where urban populations compose most of their state’s population, the state is usually controlled by the Democrat Party. Comparing the map above with the two maps below showing the results of

A map of the united states with each state 's electoral votes.
A map of the united states with the names of each state.the 2020 state elections confirms these observations. Urban Black allegiance to Democrats usually leads to election of Democrat mayors, city leadership groups, school boards, and prosecutors. Additionally, in states where urban populations form a majority, Democrat governors and legislatures are also usually elected. Urban Black allegiance to Democrats gives Democrats control over virtually all aspects of life in urban African American population centers and communities. Therefore, Democrats have had a responsibility to ensure that the lives of African Americans were improved since they gained Black allegiance to Democrats in the 1940’s.

For Democrats in these areas, Black lives should actually matter; and the lives of their African American constituents should have improved every day during the last 80 years. African Americans should have benefited from their Black allegiance to Democrats.

Is Black Allegiance to Democrats Still Justified?

To quote President Donald J. Trump while seeking the African American vote as the Republican candidate in the 2016 election and sitting President and candidate in the 2020 election, What do you have to lose? In other words, Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified? The question is not a Trump 2024 endorsement; but rather an endorsement of policies designed to make America great again (MAGA) and put We the People of the United States first in both domestic and foreign affairs. Under those Republican, MAGA, policies and initiatives, African Americans, and all minorities, achieved the lowest unemployment rates and highest prosperity in history prior to the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the current status of education, poverty and fatherlessness, healthcare, crime, culture and the present economic situation for African Americans, indeed for all We the People, Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?

In my old White man‘s opinion, African Americans should be asking some additional questions. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Again, in my opinion, the answer to that question Is an emphatic, no. Another reasonable question is this, Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? This also seems to be a reasonable question.

One Black man’s answer to these questions appeared in an article by Larry Elder. In his 2004 Baltimore Sun article, The secret story of blacks’ success he observed that Illinois Republican Senate candidate Alan L. Keyes proposed exempting Blacks from paying federal income taxes for a couple generations. Keyes stated that slavery “was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment.” In my opinion, Keyes like others, failed to mention that slavery existed for 170 years before Constitutional, federal, governance began or that British mercantilism forced the start of slavery and its continuation until 1789. British mercantilism made slavery an economic necessity for successful agriculture in the South during colonial times. This is not an excuse for slavery, it simply supplies a historical context for slavery. Larry Elder, an African American, asked Who argues with that? What he meant was, who agrees with reparations, not who disagrees that slavery was egregious, because slavery was egregious.

Elder noted that despite slavery, Jim Crow, and racism, the progress of American Blacks is simply astounding. Black America, if divided into a separate country, ranks No. 16 in gross domestic product. Elder quotes economist Thomas Sowell, another African American, as follows:

Black economic progress increased tremendously well before ‘level-the-playing-field’ government policies and programs. In fact, 40 [years after] Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, the income gap between Blacks and Whites closed faster ‘prewar’ than ‘postwar.’

The economic rise of Blacks began decades earlier, before any of the legislation and policies that are credited with producing that rise. The continuation of the rise of Blacks out of poverty did not – repeat, did not – accelerate during the 1960s.

“The poverty rate among Black families fell from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s, but this continuation of the previous trend was neither unprecedented nor something to be arbitrarily attributed to the programs like the War on Poverty.”

Elder observes that In America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, authors Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom agree that the Black middle class expanded well before “affirmative action” In their book they state:

“The growth of the Black middle class long predates the adoption of race conscious social policies. In some ways, indeed, the Black middle class was expanding more rapidly before 1970 than after. … Many of the advances Black Americans have made since the Great Depression occurred before anything that can be termed ‘affirmative action’ existed.”

According to Elder, after President Ronald Reagan cut the top tax rate from 70% to 28%, Black income, business development, and business growth exploded. According to the National Review, by 1989, Black unemployment dropped from 20.4% to 11.4% while White unemployment dropped by only 4%…. A Black entrepreneurial class flourished.” According to the Census Bureau, the trend started under President Reagan continued through the Clinton years. Black-owned businesses increased almost three times faster than the total number of firms in the United States, receipts by Black-owned firms more than doubled, and from 1980 to 1990, the median income of Black households grew one and a half times faster than White households. Between 1992 and 1997, there was a 25.7% increase in Black-owned firms and a 32.5% increase in their gross sales.

In its 1963, Ebony magazine series called “If I Were Young Today,” Black high achievers offered advice to young Blacks. In his article, Paul Williams, said:

“Whatever one ds as a profession or livelihood, he should endeavor to read the current magazines pertaining to his work. One must keep pace with progress and what the other fellow is thinking and doing. In order to do this, he must read – read – read!!! He should strive to become a specialist and not just another architect, engineer or salesman.”

Elder noted that none of those offering advice even hinted at a need for race-based preferences. The road to success is simple, if not easily applied – hard work, sacrifice and, above all, the refusal to think like a victicrat. You know, the same formula used by Alan Keyes. To Democrats and progressives, “hard work,” “sacrifice,” and self-discipline (“read, read, read!!!”) are capitalistic values which they oppose. This begs the question, “Is Black allegiance to democrats still justified?”

Education

Black high school graduation rates are encouraging. In 1940, less than 8% of Blacks graduated from high school compared to 27% for Whites. By 2014, African American high school graduation rate was 86% and the White rate was 89%. At least two other internet articles came to the same conclusion. Unfortunately, a 2017, Pew Research Center article by Drew Desilver,  U.S. academic achievement lags that of many other countries, is discouraging. Fifteen-year-old U.S. students rank 24th in science and reading, and 38th in mathematics, compared to students in other countries of the world. Additionally, the 2020 Brookings Institute article, by Kenneth Shores, Ha Eun Kim, and Mela Still, Categorical inequalities between Black and white students are common in US schools”but they don’t have to be, is disheartening for African Americans. The chart and discussion below A bar graph showing the number of students in each class.portray critical inequalities in educational outcomes and opportunities for Black and White high school students. Teachers who use race as a classifier, which is unacceptable, instead of objective standards like test scores and grade point averages, often create racial disparities in opportunities for African American students. Racial differences in socio-economic status tend to account for most variation suspension rates, classification into specialized classes, and placement in advanced courses. Many educators suggest that sorting students into different educational experiences is attributable to students’ characteristics, race,

or Blacks don’t take advanced math because they confront steeper out-of-school challenges which is beyond the control of schools. In the authors view, schools create these socially relevant categories, and teachers and school leaders sort students into them creating categorical inequalities for Black students. Consequently, school districts where Black students are worse off academically or socio-economically, tend to increase the educational disadvantages that Black students face. Districts with greater inequality, segregation, and lower overall socio-economic status also has larger achievement and disciplinary gaps between White and Black students. With the insights they present, the authors claim that school districts can either perpetuate or undo categorical inequalities.

The National School Board Association article Black Students in the Condition of Education 2020, article reports that 45% of Black students attended high-poverty schools, compared with 8% of white students; and about 25% of Black students, higher than the proportion of Blacks in the U.S. population, were enrolled in predominantly Black public schools. In the 2017“2018 school year, only two thirds of the Black students enrolled in Individuals with Disability Education Act programs graduated with a regular high school diploma. This was the lowest rate among all racial/ethnical groups. The National Report Card achievement scores showed that almost seven times more White students scored above the proficient level in Geography; and almost three times more White students scored above the proficient level in Reading compared to Black students. The results were within this range for History, Civics, Science, Math, and Technology and Engineering Literacy. The article noted that the proficiency gap between White and Black students has not closed.

In addition, U.S. educators continuously replace core academics with transformational social and cultural engineering curricula. The fact that overall student outcomes in reading, science, and math lag behind at least one fourth of the world’s countries including competitors like China seems irrelevant to our educators. Unfortunately, Black students are about three to four times less proficient in core subjects compared to White students and far behind many students of the world. The Miseducation of America by David Goodwin, President of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, is a review of the Fox Nation series, The Miseducation of America. Goodwin observes that progressives started their transformation of American education in 1907 with the Gary Plan. The progressive goal was complete removal Christianity and traditional values from America’s schools and elimination of America’s Christian identity. This identify perpetuated the Western Christian Paideia, Judeo-Christian values, the idea that men, all people, should be educated to be well-rounded, refined in intellect, morals, and physicality, so training of both the body and mind is important. Goodwin describes the conflict between the progressive vision and the Christian vision for America as follows:

The progressive narrative [paideia] tells us that our civilization today is the result of human progress over time, and now that science rules the day, they can improve civilization even further if given enough power and control. [The] Christian narrative teaches something else. Our present culture and civilization will remain great only insofar as it aligns with Truth. Because Truth is fixed and unchanging, we should guard our society from influences that conflict with it, and we should strive to pursue Truth.. The Progressives at the turn of the 20th century knew what they were up against. As long as the Western Christian Paideia defined our culture and civilization, the progressive agenda would be limited. Progressive philosophies, such as Critical Theory, Marxism, and the influence of the Frankfurt School, dominate education. Today, our schools are far from the engine of freedom that classical Christian education once was.

The progressive thinkers behind this plan were, and still are, primarily atheistic Marxists who used Frankfurt School concepts of critical theory to challenge all aspects of Western civilization, Biblical Christianity, and capitalism. In the late 1960’s, Herbert Marcuse, a Frankfurt School critical theorist and Father of the new left, observed that a propaganda based educational dictatorship would be required  before radical Marxist change could occur in Western Europe and the United states. Marcuse determined that working class labors were no longer a subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change in western society and culture. Consequently, he identified anti-capitalists, radical intellectuals, the socially marginalized, exploited, persecuted outcasts and outsiders of ethnic minorities, people of color, the unemployed, and the unemployable as trainable revolutionaries. Ethnic and gender study programs were established in most universities to train the envisioned revolutionaries. Critical Race Theory, CRT, Critical Gender Theory, CGT, and Queer Theory, QT, were, and still are, useful tools for these revolutionaries. The educators trained for this transformation of our nation now teach our children, including African Americans, from Preschool to Ph.D., Marxism PP.

According to the on-line Britannica article, Basic tenets of critical race theory updated in 2021 by Brian Duignan., there are six basic tenants of CRT. First, according to Duignan,

Race is an undefined social construction. [To] some theorists, race is a set of physical characteristics including skin color, certain facial features, and hair texture; and imagined set of psychological and behavioral tendencies. The [imagined psychological and behavioral tendencies] have been created and maintained by dominant groups (in the United States, whites of western European descent) to justify their oppression and exploitation of other groups on the basis of the latter’s supposed inferiority, immorality, or incapacity for self-rule.”

Second, Duignan notes that CRT considers racism to be the normal experience of most people of color. African Americans, and other minorities, face discrimination and unfair treatment in the public and private sectors. Third, the racial hierarchy of American society may be unaffected or even reinforced by improvements in the legal status of oppressed or exploited people. Our laws, from the Constitution and Amendments to the laws of today, represent institutional White racism, structural racism, designed to oppress all minorities. Fourth, minority groups are periodically assigned negative stereotypes that benefit the needs or interests of whites. Fifth, no individual can be adequately identified by membership in a single group. An African American person may also be a Christian. Sixth, people of color are uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of other members of their group (or groups) regarding the forms and effects of racism.

Progressives claim that CRT is not taught in our preschool through grade 12 schools, but Duignan contradicts this claim when he writes, generalized versions of some [CRT] claims appear in the curricula of some public schools. Indeed, CRT retraining or re-education classes are now required in major corporations and the military. In preschool through grade 12 schools, the curricula teach the basic ideas of CRT; but the curricula are not re-education; they are education. Our White children must be taught that they will all benefit from White Privilege, and they are all racist oppressors who will create negative stereotypes of minorities, benefit from laws, and institutions to maintain White dominance, oppression, and exploitation of minorities. Our Black and other minority children must be taught that they will be subjected to oppression, negative stereotyping, domination, exploitation, and legal and institutional obstacles designed by White people to maintain white superiority over them. To put it succinctly, CRT in our public schools teaches our children that White people are all cruel, mean, and evil, White Supremacists, whether they know it or not; and Black people are the oppressed victims of all White people. CRT curricula includes texts and literature written for each level of students, Preschool through grade 12. I my opinion, CRT is divisive and racist.

Critical Gender Theory, CGT, curricula, including texts and lessons developed for students from preschool to grade 12, is now taught in public schools nationwide. The Bartleby Research article on Critical Gender Theory states that gender, a device by which society controls its members, revolves around the theory that gender is a social construct designed to subjugate women as system of oppression. CGT refuses binary gender characterizations in connection with sexuality. This theory says get rid of the norm and we do not need to come up with categories that are outside the norm.

Queer Theory, QT, and CGT are interrelated aspects of Critical Theory’s critique of traditional Western Judeo-Christian culture and traditional family values. The on-line article Queer Theory is a review of Queer in The Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. CGT and QT are aggressive assaults on traditional values. QT is one of the key contemporary critical theories of sex, gender, and sexuality. Therefore, it is one of the handful of specific and activist-driven approaches to ‘applied postmodernism.’ QT disputes the power dynamics and social constructions concerning homosexuality. The QT review states,

QT exists to antagonize norms, that is, anything that can be considered normal by society (even [an] accurate, neutral description) that carries a morally normative exceptionwhich [QT] deems intrinsically oppressive. This attitude is probably most clearly understood in the dichotomy normal [which has a positive connotation] versus abnormal [which has a negative connotation]. QT wouldn’t merely seek to expand the boundaries of normal’ to include circumstances like homosexuality or intersex conditions; but to [establish] the idea that normal is constraining and oppressive.

QT seems to deliberately confuse anything that is. normal [or] commonplace [like] heterosexuality or the sexual binary. Any variation [from normal] must be understood pejoratively and seen as illegitimate. Society has strong expectations for people to [be] normal. [QT] sees these expectations as [an] application of dominance to create oppression. Conflation of normal [with] moral is the centerpiece of QT. [This conflation of normal and moral makes it] relatively easy for QT to keep muddying this water for its own activist purposes sometimes called queering, [queering something, or just being queer].

Being queer [is not] being LGBT because being queer cannot accept normalcy or stability even within those categories. In fact, there should be no categories at all other than queer [which is woke or critically conscious under QT doctrines] and ‘not-yet-queer [or] bad’.

In her 2021 Heritage Foundation article, Woke Gender, Emilie Kao observed that like CRT, gender theory,  CGT,  (and QT) emerged from universities and have been propelled into the mainstream by identity politics. CGT rejects any relationship between biology and gender as biological essentialism. Accordingly, the biology of sex and gender (the way one expresses being male or female) are performed social constructs. Therefore, gender (and the body itself) can be reconstructed according to CGT and QT.

According to Kao, progressives insist that others must accept this dogma. This latest iteration of the sexual revolution is destructive to children and threatens the rights of parents to determine the upbringing of their children. The political lobbying organizations and woke capital hidden from parents, are transforming medicine and education into fields for transgender activism. Children are treated with a one size fits-all narrative, affirmative care, that has no basis in science, common sense, or compassion. Affirmative care uses hormonal and surgical interventions on minors to affirm gender identity. It limits counselors and doctors to affirming that boys are trapped in girls’ bodies, and vice-versa, even in children as young as 4 years old. Twenty states also ban talk therapy for gender dysphoria, meaning that counselors are forbidden from questioning a child as to whether he or she is actually trapped in the wrong body.

Ultimately, CGT and QT drives wedges between children and their parents. They also drive wedges between parents and activist educators promoting CGT and QT ideas in the classroom confusing children about their gender when they are emotionally and physically unprepared for the ideas. As Prof. Melissa Moschella has explained, despite the Supreme Court ruling in Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters affirming that parents have a fundamental and pre-political right to direct the education and upbringing of their children, judges have removed children from the custody of parents who opposed hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria. CGT and QT have so permeated American culture and law that parents who question it now risk challenges from the government. For parents to succeed in protecting children from woke gender ideology, they will need to do political battle. Like critical race theory, gender theory has entered pediatricians’ offices and classrooms through the work of political activists.

With this information in mind concerning the schools attended by African Americans, five questions seem reasonable. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? Do African Americans approve of teachers’ unions, school boards, and educators who seek to undermine the rights of parents to demand an end to curricula, like CRT, CGT, and QT, that undermine African American’s traditional values, Christianity, and families? Should African Americans work to challenge or remove school boards that continue to fail to close the education gap between White and Black students? Since Democrats support teachers’ unions and school boards that support progressive curricula that failed our students, especially African Americans, Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?

Poverty and Fatherlessness

Although the African American middle-class continues to grow, the Black family poverty rate was 23% with the Black female parent family poverty rate at a staggering 37% in 2014, the poverty rate declined 33% for all Black families and 55% for single female parent Black families. The trends related to poverty in the United States are similar for all families from 1967 to 2014. A chart showing the percentage of black families in poverty.

Chart: History of Poverty in Black American Families

Poverty among Black families is more severe for both two parent and single female parent families compared to all families in both categories. If White families in both categories was presented, the difference would be even more stark. The data clearly shows that single female parent Black families are three time more likely to suffer poverty than two parent Black families. Although the difference has declined since 2000, Black single female parent families are almost twice as likely to suffer poverty compared to Black two parent families. With this data in mind, the same two questions seem reasonable. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance?

In the Black Community News article, ’72 Percent’ Documentary on Fatherless Black Children, the Senior editor observed that Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, warned of the female-headed household crisis among Blacks due to an illegitimacy rate of about 24 % which would have devastating social consequences.

According to the author,

The saddest thing about out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the United States is the children are, for all intents and purposes, fatherless. A man is more emotionally and financially invested in his children when he lives with them and is married to their mother. Children who don’t live with their biological fathers are at higher risk for out-of-wedlock pregnancies, school truancy and drop-outs, and criminality. The majority of juvenile delinquents and adult prisoners grew up in female-headed households. Fatherless children are much more likely to suffer physical abuse, including sexual, because of the men their mothers bring home.

The Center for Health Journalism article, How Absent Fathers Are Hurting African American Boys by Lottie Joiner, painted a similarly dire picture for African American boys raised in fatherless homes. She described three Black boys who lived next door to her in a low-income neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Before their father died, he encouraged them to help their neighbors; and He kept close watch over them, warning his boys of the dangers that lurked in the streets. According to Joiner, after the boys’ father died life changed drastically for them. Although their mother tried to get help for her boys, none graduated from high school, two have criminal records, and the youngest was in drug rehab several times. Joiner asked, So what happened? and What did these young men need in their lives that their mother could not provide? She sought to answer those two questions with another, What happens to a boy ” specifically young African American men who are often faced with the eye of scrutiny from the world ” who ds not have a father present in his life. Joiner continued, If [young Black boys] don’t have a father in the home who can act as a source of support and one of your pillars for your formation of resilience, then you’re less likely to be resilient in the face of a lot of sources of trauma. She concluded that father-absence adversely impacted the mental health of Black boys and young men leading to major depression disorders. She quoted one Washington D.C. family therapist Ayize Ma’at who said, They’re hurting. They’reacting out pain. They’re just trying to meet a need ” the need to be included, to be loved, to be welcomed, respected, and wanted. Sadly, in my opinion, gangs often fulfill that need.

Another potential factor contributing to fatherlessness in African American homes is fatherless fathers or fathers whose fathers abused them, or their mothers. These men may not know how to be the kind of fathers or husbands they want to be or fear failure or becoming abusive themselves. These fathers could choose to be absent from their families. As noted previously, boys and young men raised without fathers are likely school dropouts, substance abusers, or become involved in gangs or other criminal activities, often becoming absentee fathers themselves. The result is generational fatherlessness in the less affluent segments of the African America community. Unfortunately, Joiner’s article was short on real answers to the problem of the adverse impact of fatherless homes on African American boys and young men. Her answer seemed to be, It takes a village with mental health and mentoring resources.

Speculation, concerning the causes of absentee father homes among African Americans, abounds. Some answers seem obvious to an outsider like me, who many African Americans would call a racist old White man.  The answers are socially, racially, economically politically, and regionally complicated. The answers also require patience, understanding, and open, frank dialog. Since 37% of the Black families living in poverty are fatherless, double the percentage of Blacks in the U.S. population, every potential factor should be considered. From my perspective, one potentially important issue may be government programs that provide resources to single moms where benefits increase based on the number of children in a home. Many conservatives believe that these programs incentivize father-absent homes rather than traditional family values. Three articles may provide some insight into the issue. According to the 2022 article, How To Get Government Help & Assistance As A Single Mom, a single mom can find government help. There are thousands of state and federal programs to cover food, rent, utility bills, and credit card debt so single moms can have extra money to spend on their children. In the 2020 article, How Much in Benefits Can a Single Mother Receive?, the author states, Mothers who are unemployed or make less than $25,000 per year are eligible for more benefits. Single mothers with many children also usually receive more benefits. In her 2022 article, 18 government assistance programs for moms with no income, Emma Johnson observes that about 56% of the people who live in poverty in the United States are women, and most of those are unmarried women of color with children who live below the federal poverty line. Universal Basic Income, or UBI, is an efficient, effective way to alleviate poverty and improve society overall. These programs give people a guaranteed sum of cash each month to get the services or resources they need. Single moms stand to benefit the most from this kind of aide. Each of these articles, and many others, provide links help moms find programs that meet their specific needs.

Since fatherlessness contributes to both poverty and criminality at twice the rate in Black culture compared to White culture, the same questions are relevant. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? Other questions about how single moms are supported seem relevant, Should the programs be tied to required self-improvement classes or education with associated childcare provisions? Should the number of children receiving supplements be limited? Should the programs require non-abortive birth control where failure to comply would end subsidies for more children? Does welfare for single mothers encourage or discourage unmarried women from having babies? These are difficult issues to solve. Two final questions are appropriate. Have the programs supported by Democrats provided meaningful solutions to date?  Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified when it comes to fatherlessness and poverty in Black culture and many communities?

Healthcare

Several other factors contribute to fatherlessness in African American hones. Healthcare is a significant factor related to fatherless African American homes. In 1992, Black men were about 10% to 33% more likely than White men to die from most diseases, a trend that continues to this day. According to Jerry Kennard, in 2019, heart attacks and cancer accounted for about 44% of all deaths for Black men. For young Black men between about 13 -15 and 44 years of age, homicide was the leading cause of death accounting or about 30% of all deaths in this age group, exceeding heat attack and cancer deaths.

Crime

In his 2020 article, 100 Black Crime Statistics: Data, Trends & Predictions, Arthur Zuckerman provides important information concerning crimes committed by African Americans. He makes the following important statement regarding Black crime in the United States:

“Despite the massive disparity in population, Black felons outnumber Whites in crimes like manslaughter, robbery, and illegal gambling. They also take up large percentages of both serious and petty crimes. Tighter law enforcement measures might be needed to improve the safety [in Black] communities, provided that the suspects are judged based on their acts and not their skin color.”

African Americans comprise about 15%; Whites comprise about 62%; and bi-racial Whites and Whites comprise about 71% of the US population.  In 2017, 53.1% of the arrests for manslaughter, 54% of the arrests for robbery, 33.5% of the arrests for aggravated assault, 28.7% of rape arrests, 29.8% of burglary arrests, and 43.9% of the arrests for illegal firearms were Black. in 2015, 58.8% of the Blacks in prison had committed violent crimes; and, in 2013, Blacks accounted for 52.2% of all murder arrests while Whites made up 45.3%. In Black-on-Black violence, familiarity and proximity are critical factors.  According to the FBI, in 2018, most murder victims are acquaintances of the suspects when their relationship to each other was identified. Crimes committed by friends and family exceed those perpetrated by strangers. 70.3% of the violent incidents suffered by Black victims were committed by Black offenders. In 2015 2,380 Blacks were accosted by Black killers. The proportion of Black-on-Black homicides to the number of Black people killed was 89.3% in 2015. For all crime categories discussed, one striking statistic is greatly concerning. The rate of criminality is two to three times greater than the proportion of African Americans in the U.S. population. Gangs, their drug trade and the associated criminality, and resultant incarceration also contributes to fatherlessness in Black families. Where African American crime is concerned, the same two questions are appropriate. Have African Americans benefited significantly from almost 80 years of Black allegiance to Democrats? Has the progress made by African Americans during the last 80 years occurred because of Black allegiance to Democrats or in spite of that allegiance? Another relevant question is, Why is criminality so high among African Americans? The high proportion of father-absence among African American families may provide one part of the answer to these questions.

The Assault on African American Culture

As a racist old White man, and total outsider, the assault on African American culture and society seems to contribute to many of the issues adversely affecting African Americans. From my White privileged, white supremacist perspective, asking pointed questions designed to promote critical thinking and dialog, is the least provocative way to approach the issues. First, Ds the progressive assault, on traditional values, morality, and ethics in the overall American culture and society, contribute to African American issues related to education and the noted racial disparities, poverty and fatherlessness, healthcare, and crime? The answer to problems related to these issues is a resounding yes for both White and Black Americans; but Why?A quote from joseph stalin on the side of a black background.The answer lies in the Frankfurt School’s application of critical theory to move people and cultures to accept atheistic Marxist progressive ideology as the bases of governance and society. Critical theory uses every academic discipline and most aspects of our culture to promote the revolutionary, transformational change they envision for the United States. Three of the most important disciplines used by critical theorists to accomplish their goals are psychiatry, psychology, and sociology. Research projects are developed and statistically designed by researchers in these disciplines to support the tenants of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Queer Theory, and attack Biblical Christianity, traditional values, and our system of governance.

Elimination of Christianity, especially Biblical Christianity, and our traditional Judeo-Christian values as major influences on American culture and society, is the primary goal of Marxist progressives. In my opinion, progressives oppose Christianity for several reasons First, both Judaism and Christianity teach that each individual is important to God; and individualism is an anathema to Marxists since their success depends of the individual’s subjugation to the collective. Consequently, the individual is worthless compared to the value of the collective. In contrast, Biblical Christianity teaches that the individual has infinite value because

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still Sinners, Christ (God’s only Son) died for us (each individual)” (Romans 5:8 NIV).

The value of the individual is magnified by the fact that

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs “ heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:16-17 NIV).

As joint heirs with God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, each Christian individual has infinite value in the sight of the God. Marxist philosophers have expressed their disdain for the role of Christianity in promoting the individual. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote,

Christianity alienated man’s communal character as a species into individual relationships with an external being resulting in the rise of individualism. The essence of Man is contained only in community, in the unity of Man with Man. [In the relationship between] ‘I and Thou,’ [Christ had become] ‘Thou.’ [Religion was misdirected].

Engels observed that the abstract subjectivity of individualism to be a problem of the Christian-Germanic view of the world and the Christian state. Accordingly, the free and spontaneous association of men would lead to an ever certain victory over the unreason of the individual.

The second reason progressives oppose Christianity is the relationship between the Biblical Christian Church and traditional Christian family to the nurture and training of each generation of Biblical Christian individuals. Evangelism, conversion of non-Christians, is a primary task of Biblical Christian churches and individuals. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whver believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Each person on earth is individually valued and loved by God. While discussing the church and religion in The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote, Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. In A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Nikolai Bukharin wrote, religion [especially Christianity] must be opposed actively [since it would take too long for it to] die out of its own accord.

The traditional Biblical Christian family with a father, mother, and their children is another reason progressives oppose Christianity. The Christian family serves the same basic function as the Christian church with the primary emphasis on their children. This family model ds not fit the preferred progressive family model. It is both hierarchical and patriarchal, an anathema to LGBTQ+ activists and social Marxists. Marxist, progressive opposition to the traditional family is clear. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote:

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois (ruling class, landowners, and capitalists) family based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.

In The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions, Robert Briffault observed that paternal families were a product of economic systems where property inheritance by individuals was important to society. Briffault’s vision for the future family is not traditional. He concluded:

The expectation that the decay of the patriarchal family as a result of the serious crisis of the individualistic, competitive economy would increase, and that a society no longer characterized by competitiveness would be able finally to release social emotions which went beyond the narrow and distorting circle of family.

Friedrich Engels viewed the Bourgeois, traditional Biblical family, as an institution of male dominance in which the wife simply provided heirs for legal transmission of property to succeeding generations in exchange for sustenance. Engels considered the relationship a form of prostitution. Michele Barrett defined family as simply kinship arrangements or the organization of a household. This view is consistent with the current demands of the LGBTQ+ agenda. The role of the Biblical Christian family in relation to raising strong Biblical Christian individuals is a significant reason that progressives oppose Christianity.

Thirdly, progressives oppose Christianity because of the relationship between individualism and capitalism. They understand that Biblical Christianity produces individuals who are confident, self-reliant, well-rounded, refined in intellect, morals, and physicality, potential capitalists and entrepreneurs. Progressives know that virtually every major corporation was founded by one or a few individuals who had confidence in our Constitutional, capitalistic, economic system to risk starting their business. Since Marxist progressives oppose capitalism, Christianity must be opposed and every level. A fact that most progressives refuse to admit.

It seems that African American culture and society have suffered greatly from the progressive assault on traditional values, including Biblical Christianity, the traditional family, individualism, and capitalism. Since Democrats support the progressive assault of traditional values, “Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?”

Marxist progressives and Critical Theorists use education and telecommunication industries as tools of teaching and indoctrination. Marxism has been largely assimilated into modern social sciences. Consequently, our students, now from Preschool to PhD., Marxism PP, are taught by curricula determined by the left’s educational dictatorship. CRT, CGT, and QT are now stealthily taught in virtually every discipline, especially liberal arts and social sciences. With these educational programs, each new generation of citizens, including leaders of the industries below, becomes more tolerant of and often in favor of a more progressive culture and socialist society in the United States. The cultural weapons used by progressive Critical Theorists to deliver their ideas to the people of the United States for this assault include the news media, movie industry, music, television, advertising, fashion, and literature. Movies, television, music, and literature routinely portray extra-marital sex, including bi-sexual and homosexual characters, and unmarried co-habitation as acceptable. The behavior occurs in most prime-time television programming and advertisements viewed by our children. On these venues, children are exposed to hundreds of violent acts each year. Although criminals usually suffer consequences for crime in hourly dramas, seasons long series like the Sopranos and Empire depict the lavish wealth potentially generated by crime and drug empires. The events portrayed tell children that non-traditional sex and families are acceptable, and carefully done, crime pays. The news media usually portrays interactions between law enforcement and Black criminals as prime examples of systematic racism” or White privilege. When these interactions result in a Black fatality, news and social media, and civil rights leaders often fan flames of protest before the facts are known. The chart below provides some interesting data regarding deaths caused by Police brutality. It shows that

A bar chart showing the number of people shot to death by police in the united states from 2 0 1 7 through 2 0 3 4.From The real number of unarmed black people killed by police Washington Post, 2022

the rate of Black deaths caused by police is about the same as the rate of Black criminality and less than total white deaths which are also like White criminality rates.

According to The U.S. Sun, 2020 article How many unarmed black people are killed by police each year? By Patrizia Rizzo, from 2013-2019, over 1,000 people were killed by police, and one third were black. The article also notes that 765 people killed by police in 2020, 28% were black. The article notes its discouragement since the Black population is only 13% of the U.S. population. As noted in the Crime section above, For all crime categories discussed, one striking statistic is greatly concerning. The rate of criminality is two to three times greater than the proportion of African Americans in the U.S. population. The article title implies that most of the blacks killed by police, 201 to 333 according to the percentages in the article, were unarmed. Yet, the article cites only three examples of unarmed victims killed by police brutality in America, noting that two of the three victims highlighted in the article resisted arrest; but, they should not have died. The article failed to supply actual data regarding the number of unarmed, compliant Blacks killed by police during the time periods discussed. Nor did the article mention that the rate of Black criminality and deaths at the hands of police is virtually identical. The article also failed to provide data about the number of Black deaths occurring during violent altercations with police involving weapons., guns, or hand to hand battles threatening the lives of police.

In her 2020 Wall Street Journal opinion article, The Myth of Systemic Police Racism, Heather Mac Donald wrote,

“The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is ‘no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,’ they concluded.

When an African American dies in an encounter with police, especially a White officer, is the news coverage and national civil rights activist’s response designed to discover the facts about the encounter, stir Black resentment toward police, and promote the CRT doctrine that our policing and criminal justice system is systematically racist? In my opinion, the facts are usually secondary to the narrative and CRT agenda.

A Result of the Assault: Breonna Taylor

One tragic incident puts the assault on traditional values and African American culture into perspective, the Breonna Taylor death at the hands of Louisville, KY, police. The incident tragically combines extra-marital relationships, potential single female parenthood, crime and drugs, policing, and the CRT narrative that our criminal justice system is systematically racist into a single event.

In the predawn hours of March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by Louisville, KY. police executing a search warrant looking for illegal drugs and drug money. Taylor was a 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician. By the night of the raid, Taylor had broken ties with her previous boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted drug dealer and accused weapons trafficker in Louisville. Taylor had been dating Glover on and off for several years. She resumed another apparently long term relationship with Kenneth Walker, which developed into a serious live-in relationship according to an American Thinker article. Walker had a license to carry a 9 mm Glock. Some reports note that Walker kept other weapons in Taylor’s apartment. The reason Walker had a license to carry was difficult to determine.

The American Thinker article provided details of the information evaluated by the court that issued the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment. Glover made frequent trips to Taylor’s apartment and once took a package from Taylor’s apartment to a known drug house. When Glover was arrested in January, he called Taylor who arranged for an associate of Glover to post bail. Taylor also was involved in procuring bail for another Glover associate. The article,  Fact-checking claims about Breonna Taylor’s death reports that a car registered in Taylor’s name stopped at drug properties under surveillance; and Glover listed her apartment as his home address leading police to  believe that Glover “used her apartment to receive mail, keep drugs, or stash money earned from the sale of drugs. This information was sufficient for the court to issue a warrant for the raid on Taylors apartment.

On the night of the raid, Talor and walker herd loud pounding on the apartment door, got out of bed, and went into the hallway yelling to learn who was pounding on the door of the apartment. Walker was in front, and Taylor was slightly behind and beside him. When plain clothed police broke through the door and Walker saw three men, he fired one shot that struck one office in the leg. Walker later claimed that he was afraid the intruders were Glover and associates, and he shot in self-defense. Walker also claimed that he did not hear police announce themselves.  Which is contradicted by a witness. It is reasonable to assume the Walker did not hear the police due to the other noise of the raid. The officers immediately returned fire to neutralize the shooter in accordance with active shooter protocol and training. Inexplicably, Talor, who was unarmed, was shot five times, once fatally, and died at the scene. Walker, the shooter, was unharmed. Much of this information is also reported in NBC on-line , USA TODAY, and other articles. Details of the case are also presented by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron at a Sept. 23,  2020, press conference.

As soon as social media started sharing news of Breonna Taylor’s death protests began. These early reports contained both false and incorrect information. She was unarmed [true] and shoot in bed [false].  She died due to a no-knock warrant executed at the wrong address [both false]. The claim that the target, Jamarcus Glover [false], was not in the apartment was a misrepresentation of the target which was the apartment not Glover. The raid was botched because no drugs or drug money was in the apartment. In situations like this, there is no guarantee that targeted money and drugs are at the target location when raids are conducted. This false information and misrepresentation of the situation quickly fanned protests and demonstrations in Louisville and other cities around the nation. Benjamin Crump quickly became the Taylor family attorney for litigation against the City of Louisville. He was joined by Al Sharpton, and other civil rights activists almost immediately who agitated the African American community with claims of injustice and systematic racism on the part of Louisville police. They also demanded that the officers involved be charged with murder before the facts of the case were determined. By late May after the May 25 death of unarmed George Floyd at the hands of a White police officer, later convicted of murder, large Black Live Matter demonstrations turned into a summer of protests that turned into riots, death, and $2 billion in property damage throughout the United States and Louisville. Breonna Taylor’s family received a $12,000,000 suit settlement from the City of Louisville, KY, on September 15,2020.

In my opinion, Breonna Taylor’s death was caused as much by the Marxist, progressive assault on traditional values, Biblical Christianity, the traditional patricentric family, morality, and ethics as it was caused by the Louisville, KY, police. The assault on traditional values, supported by Democrats, told Breonna that extra-marital relationships and pre-marital co-habitation are ok, dating drug dealers is ok, helping drug dealers and their associates is ok, and, if she knew the situation, living in the apartment listed as the address of a drug dealer is safe and ok. These issues are problems in both the Black and White communities; but, with the rate of criminality in the Black community that is 2-3 times greater than the percentage of Blacks in the U.S., the issues impact African Americans more severely. Is it reasonable to ask, “Is Black allegiance to Democrats still justified?”

Run, Resist, Don’t Comply or Die, Means You Probably Will Die

As a father and grandfather, the needless deaths of African Americans who are killed by law enforcement officers because they run from, resist, or don’t comply with the orders of the officers is unnecessary and tragic. It is incomprehensible to me that Young Black Americans, especially law abiding young Black boys and men, are taught by their community and civil rights leaders, parents, peers, educators, mainstream news outlets, and the entertainment industry that encounters with law officers are usually dangerous to them today. Every race has a few bad apple racists. Black assaults on Asians are a growing racist problem. The vast majority of White Americans abhor White supremacists and racists and want to see them punished as a scourge on the overall American Culture. Any law officer who racially abuses their authority must be removed from law enforcement. In today’s environment, law officers understand that every encounter with the public could result in their injury or death, loss of their job, or possible indictment, prosecution, and conviction if they fail to do their job safely and lawfully. Consequently, most of the law officers encountered by Black Americans do not want to harm them. In my opinion, if the greater African American community taught Black Americans this simple phrase regarding encounters with the law, the death toll would drop immeasurably.

Comply, don’t die.

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CORPORATE WELFARE AND DISNEY

A couple of mickey mouse and minnie mouse standing next to each other.Corporate welfare and Disney in Florida represent the worst of corporate welfare and the use of tax breaks and incentives to attract big business and corporations to states and cities. While businesses, like Disney, bring employment and tax revenue to an area, big business does not control the people, government, or public education of the area they move into We the People, through our legislative representatives and state executive branches, control our government and education. Business can lobby government, but businesses do not have a vote in government by and for the people. In Florida, the relationship between corporate welfare and Disney became toxic when the woke Disney openly opposed and criticized the cultural norms, traditional values, and parental rights supported by the majority of Floridians.

House Bill (HB) 1557 signed by is Governor Ron DeSantis on March 28,2022 is central to this controversy. The bill, Parental Rights in Education,

œreinforces parents fundamental rights to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their children. The bill prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through 3rd grade and prohibits instruction that is not age appropriate for students and requires school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being.

Parents have every right to be informed about services offered to their child at school, and should be protected from schools using classroom instruction to sexualize their kids as young as 5 years old.

Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nu±ez said, ‘This bill refuses to allow school boards and teachers unions the ability to hide information about students from their parents Throughout this legislative session, this bill has been maliciously maligned by those who prefer slogans and sound bites over substance and common sense. Fortunately, Governor DeSantis and I believe that parents should have a say.  We will not back down to woke corporations and their same tired tactics that are steeped in hypocrisy. As a mother of three, I am committed to protecting the rights of parents.

The phrase don’t say gay does not appear anywhere in the legislation. The legislation is exactly as its title portrays. It is parental rights legislation, not anti-LGBTQ legislation. In my opinion, it is a misrepresentation of the text and intent of the legislation to claim otherwise.

A young boy in a winter coat and hat.

Disney, the corporate bully and ungrateful corporate welfare recipient that they are, stated very openly and publicly that they would work to have the legislation reversed or rescinded. Disney does not care that most Floridians favor the œParental Rights in Education Act, and it passed both houses of the Florida legislature by strong margins. For Floridians, corporate welfare and Disney is proving to be a source of great consternation. When it comes to the bully Disney, Governor Ron DeSantis is proving to be a tuff Ralphy.

Consequently, Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation today, April 22,2022, that stripped Disney of its corporate welfare benefits dating back to the mid-1960’s when Florida was wooing Disney for its Disney World complex. Of course, progressives and officials in the two counties containing Disney World are complaining that they will be forced to spend around $2,000 per household to pay for the lost infrastructure and public service funds and debt that the corporate welfare and Disney arrangement previously provided. Unfortunately for Disney, Floridians would only pay for the lost corporate welfare if Floridians vote to accept those obligations or fail to vote to reject the obligations.

Park Meadows Mall in Douglas County, Colorado, is an example of a mechanism that Floridians should use to avoid paying for the corporate welfare that Disney will lose. In the early 1990’s a mall development group started exploring their development options. Of course, they proposed tax levies and bond issues to cover required infrastructure on the county and communities surrounding the proposed mall site which was located on unincorporated county land. The people in the area revolted and quickly and successfully petitioned the state to form the city of Lonetree, Colorado, in the area surrounding the proposed mall site. Despite threats by the mall developers to move the mall to a different location, the people of Lonetree rejected all local tax levies and bond issues which they would have to pay. As a result, the mall developers financed the infrastructure costs by adding a required percentage Infrastructure Surcharge to every mall store purchase. Consequently, the people of Lonetree did not incur additional taxes; and the infrastructure costs were spread among all the mall customers from all the state and out of state tourists. Florida and the affected counties should require Disney to add a similar surcharge to all Disney attractions and purchases. Then, the world would pay for the lost corporate welfare and Disney obligations.

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PROGRESSIVES PREFER MURDER’S OIL

A man with his hands crossed in front of him.Progressives prefer murder’s oil over America’s oil. More specifically, the left, communists, socialists, progressives, liberals, and Democrats prefer murder’s oil over oil drilled and refined in the United States. This is based on the actions, not the rhetoric, of the left including progressives. Since oil is financing much of Putin’s Russian war against Ukraine, the west, especially the United States, needs to cut off all sales of Russian and their allies oil on world markets. This must include removal of Russian and their allies oil transactions from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system. The Biden Administration is sending representatives or third-party negotiators, like Russia, to try to negotiate increased oil production for export to the United States from murderous dictators in counties like Iran, Saudi Aribia, and Venezuela. The Administration, including the President, is also unsuccessfully requesting increased oil exports from other Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) like the United Arab Emirates. These actions show that the Biden Administration and progressives prefer murder’s oil over America’s oil.

The Biden administration and progressives think the We the People of the United States are to stupid to understand that all greenhouse gases are the same regardless of the source of the carbon during their transition to renewable energy. Progressives also believe that energy inflation is an acceptable tool to reduce carbon energy use in the United States. Perhaps the Biden Administration and progressives are the stupid ones. They believe that it is economically sound to pay other countries, many controlled by murderous dictators, for oil. This strategy also ships good paying oil jobs to foreign countries robing We the People of these good paying jobs. Our enemies, both military and economic, use energy as a weapon. Progressives and the Biden Administration fail to understand that the United States, with the largest energy reserves in the world, especially our petroleum reserves, should use energy as a weapon to crippler or destroy the economies of our enemies, especially Russia which invaded Ukraine without provocation and is committing unprecedented war crimes against the Ukrainian people.

Unfortunately, for the United States and the world, the Biden Administration, from the President to Cabinet Secretaries and regulators in the Environmental Protection Agency, The Federal Reserve System, banking, treasury, commerce, energy, and transportation at virtually every level have stated their intent to eliminate carbon-based energy produced in the United States, especially petroleum, as quickly as possible. Â This policy eliminates the possibility of using our petroleum as a weapon against tyrants like Putin and his nation Russia. The policy also guarantees continued gas price inflation into the future, at least 2024, unless Republicans win veto proof House and Senate majorities in the 2022 elections. The energy policy of the Biden Administration demonstrates that Biden and progressives prefer murder’s oil over America’s oil.

Hopefully, Putin’s Russian invasion, war, and war crimes against Ukraine and its people will show the freedom loving, independent, democratic people of the world that that murderous dictators like Putin cannot be tolerated any longer. The free world should unite to destroy the economies of dictatorships, like Putin’s, before they have the economic power to wage wars like Putin’s Russian war against Ukraine. To accomplish this goal, the free democratic countries of the world must be unified economically by enacting true free trade agreements which excludes the dictatorships of the world.

The Biden Administration’s energy and foreign policies plans are totally inept, short sighted, and strategically lacking. The potential wars of the future are not being considered by this administration, progressives, and globalists. The Biden Administration does not understand that China and Russia are uniting to wage the current and upcoming economic energy wars. When the Biden Administration acted to immediately curtail carbon-based energy production, primarily petroleum, in the United States, Russia, the world’s third largest petroleum producer, could finance its invasion and war against Ukraine with oil revenue from the United States and the rest of the world. This was because we reduced Unites States oil production and became an importer rather than an exporter of oil. Our reduction in production reduced global supply and increased the global market price for oil increasing Russian oil profits. More actions demonstrating that progressives prefer murder’s oil over America’s oil.

In addition, the Biden Administration lacks foreign, environmental, and energy policies that ensure the long-term ability to secure the rare earth minerals and capacity to produce the Lithium-ion batteries needed to power the electric vehicles that they are forcing on We the People in the United States. However, Tesla does manufacture its lithium-ion batteries in their Panasonic plant in California. The minerals needed to produce lithium-ion batteries are lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, manganese, copper, and aluminum (bauxite). According to United States Geological Survey information summarized in the article, Where do batteries come  from? And where do they go?, the natural reserves of these minerals in the United States do not rank among the top five countries of the world. In contrast, China is among the top three producers of lithium, graphite, copper, and aluminum (bauxite), and the United States is not listed as a top producers of these minerals in the world. Additionally, according to the 2020 United Nations publication using 2018 data, COMMODITIES AT A GLANCE Special issue on strategic battery raw materials, Commodities at a Glance: Special issue on strategic battery raw materials (unctad.org), China controls trade of critical duratives of the world lithium, cobalt and manganese supplies by aggressive import of raw materials and refined exports and produces most of the world’s graphite. The 2019 article, How Electric Car Batteries Are Made: From Mining To Driving states that mining lithium and cobalt causes harmful environmental pollution, and cobalt mines in the Congo use child labor with extremely low wages and deplorable conditions. The Biden Administration foreign, environmental, and energy policies do not provide a long term strategy to secure supplies of the essential minerals needed to produce lithium-ion batteries in the United States. This failure will make our electronic vehicle industry supply chain issues controlled by military and economic enemies, especially China. Just as progressives prefer murder’s oil over America’s oil, progressives prefer enemy murder’s lithium-ion battery mineral supplies over America’s and our ally friend’s lithium-ion mineral supplies.

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PROGRESSIVES PREFER BLOOD OVER OIL

A group of soldiers running through the dirt.Progressives prefer blood over oil. More specifically, the left, communists, socialists, progressives, liberals, and Democrats prefer blood over oil. This is based on the actions, not the rhetoric, of the left including progressives. Since oil is financing much of Putin’s Russian war against Ukraine, the west, especially the United States, needs to cut off all sales of Russian and their allies’ oil on world markets. This must include removal of Russian and their allies’ oil transactions from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system. This step would eliminate most of Russia’s oil exports as a source of financing Putin’s Russian war against Ukraine. It would also further strangle the Russian economy. This would require the Biden Administration to reverse its restrictive oil policies and return the United States to an oil exporter, not an oil importer. This action could eliminate oil imports from Russia and its allies to the United States and our allies, especially Europe. Failure to take this step will prove that progressives prefer blood over oil; and the Biden Administration, by its inaction, prefers Ukrainian blood over oil.

Progressives claim that the United States must transition from carbon energy, oil and coal, to renewable energy to save the planet at all costs, including the blood of Ukrainians. Progressives want the United States to reduce our carbon use unilaterally when they will not require the largest carbon users in the world, Russia, China, and India, to reduce their use as a precondition to reductions by the United States. Without global cooperation, the claimed reduction in greenhouse gases contributed by the United States will have an insignificant affect in reducing greenhouse gases without reductions by the world’s worst polluters. Progressives fail to understand that the United States and the world will use the same amount of carbon energy including oil during their transition regardless of the source of the oil. Progressives also believe that energy inflation is an acceptable tool to reduce carbon energy use in the United States. This is another variant of the idea that progressives prefer blood over oil because they prefer the suffering of the poor and middle class over oil. For the poor and middle class, energy inflation causses them to choose between energy and food, medicine, or other necessities. Energy inflation is like a regressive tax that adversely affects those who can least afford the added costs.

With this in mind, why should the United States pay other countries, many our enemies, for our energy when we can produce it ourselves? Imported oil also includes the added cost of tanker and other high cost means of transport of oil further raising the price of gasoline at the pump. Therefore, the United States must become energy independent, and help eliminate the need for the United States and our allies to import Russian and its allies’ oil. If the Biden Administration does not change its policies to eliminate Russian oil imports and return the United States to an energy exporter and help Europe to become far less dependent on Russian energy, then we will know that progressives prefer blood over oil by their actions.

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